She is the director and founder of the Edna Adan Maternity Hospital in Hargeisa and an activist and pioneer in the struggle for the abolition of female genital mutilation.

[5] At the time girls weren't educated in Somaliland, but her father hired a tutor for some local boys and she learned to read and write with them.

[5] Wanting to prevent other women from undergoing the same trauma she did, she trained as a nurse and midwife in the United Kingdom at the Borough Polytechnic, now London South Bank University.

The Edna Adan Maternity Hospital officially opened on 9 March 2002, in land donated to her by the regional government at a site formerly used as a rubbish dump.

[6] The mission of the Edna Adan Hospital is to help to improve the health of the local inhabitants, in particular the high rate of maternal and infant mortality.

The facility is a non-profit making charity and a midwifery teaching hospital that is also undertaking the training of student nurses and Assistant Laboratory Technicians.

[13] In recognition of her lifelong contribution to humanitarian work, the name of Edna Adan Ismail was added to the Medical Mission Hall of Fame,[14] University of Toledo, Ohio, in March 2007.