The Somali National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary federal biomedical research Institution in Somalia; its aim is to improve national health through discovery and innovation, promote disease-preventing resources, to expand the biomedical knowledge base and to foster high-level scientific behavior. These goals support the NIH’s mission to ” build resilient systems with the capacity to prevent promptly detect and effectively respond to public health risks and emergencies through attaining and sustaining IHR (2005) core capacities” by supporting and conducting scientific research.