[2] When Abdi was twelve years old, she entered into a forced marriage with a significantly older man who was a police officer.

[5] In 1983, Abdi opened the Rural Health Development Organization (RHDO) on family-owned land in the southern Lower Shebelle region.

It began as a one-room clinic offering free obstetrician services to around 24 rural women per day, and later evolved into a 400-bed hospital.

[2] When the civil war broke out in Somalia during the early 1990s, Abdi stayed behind at the behest of her grandmother, who had advised her to use her qualifications to assist the vulnerable.

[2] It gradually expanded to include a relief camp, which during the 2011 drought housed 90,000 people on the 1,300 acres surrounding Abdi's hospital.

[2][10] Two years prior, at the height of the Islamist insurgency in southern Somalia, militants had laid siege to the compound and attempted to force Abdi to shut it down.

[2][11] The militants again stormed the area in February 2012, leading Abdi to temporarily suspend services until their eventual departure.

[3] The DHAF compound includes a hospital, school and nutritional center,[2] and provides shelter, water and medical care to mostly women and children.

The hospital also contains a small plot of land, where vegetables and maize are grown and later in part sold to cover some of the facility's maintenance costs.

[12] Funding for the compound's equipment and medical supplies is mainly secured through remittances from Somali expatriates as well as general contributions to the DHAF.