Ethiopia Health Ministry: 10 Projects and Programs

Ethiopia Ministry of Health: Planned Health System

Ethiopia is currently affected by a variety of diseases with a sharp increase in communicable infections.

Numerous Ethiopians experience high morbidity and mortality mainly credited to potentially preventable infectious diseases and nutritional deficiencies.

In order to prevent such widespread and newly budding health problems, the Ethiopia Health Ministry created a twenty year continuing Health Sector Development Program (HSDP) in 1997 (1990 E.C.).

The HSDP puts forward long-term goals for the Ethiopian health sector, along with the means to attain these objectives through a series of planned phases.

The Health Sector Development Plan aims to form a health system, which provides all-inclusive and incorporated primary care services, mostly based at community level health facilities.

The HSDP will target common nutritional disorders, environmental health and hygiene, communicable and non-communicable disease prevention and control, reproductive health care, maternal and child health, control of basic infectious diseases like upper respiratory tract infections and immunizations and the treatment.

Another key area of concern for the Ethiopia Health Ministry is the health care administrative aspects, such as human resource management, establishing quality health care and financial resource mobilization.

Related: List of Hospitals in Ethiopia

The 1st and 2nd phases of the development plan were finalized in 2001 and 2005 respectively, with the 3rd phase currently active.

Altogether the HSDP project has 8 target areas, as elaborated by the following:

* Expand primary health care access;
* Improve the quality of primary health care service provision;
* Ensure a regular and safe supply of effective, safe, affordable and high-quality drugs while improving prescribing behavior by health providers;
* Improve awareness about personal and environmental hygiene and basic knowledge of common diseases and their causes as well as promote political and community support for health services;
* Transform the health system into a four-tiered system that is linked, equitably distributed and managed in a decentralized, participatory and efficient manner;
* Monitor improvements in service delivery, quality and financial performance as well as evaluate the impact and cost-effectiveness of the project's components and
* Improve financial sustainability.

Ethiopia Minister of Health: MDG and HSDP

The final objective of the Ethiopia Health Ministry's Health Sector Development Plan (HSDP) is to create an improved overall health status for Ethiopians, as well as, achieving the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

* Blindness Prevention and Control Program
* Maternal Health Services
* Child Health Services Program
* Health Facility Construction and Rehabilitation
* Health Service Extension Program
* HIV/AIDS Control and Prevention Program
* Hygiene and Environmental Health Program
* Malaria Prevention and Control Program
* National Nutrition Program
* Tuberculosis and Leprosy Prevention and Control

Ethiopian Health Ministry

1. Blindness Prevention and Control Program

The overall objective of the Blindness Prevention and Control program in Ethiopia is to establish a country where no one is unnecessarily visually impaired, where those with inevitable vision loss can realize their full potential and where there is comprehensive access to eye care services.

2. Maternal Health Services

The Ethiopian health sector developed the National Nutrition Program (NNP) in order to help decrease the scale of malnutrition in Ethiopia.

Furthermore, they plan to coordinate and increase the current nutrition involvement by further targeting community based projects by harmonizing government strategies with various donor programs.

The Ethiopian National Nutrition Program is a long-term plan implemented in two 5 year phases.

The program will focus on the most vulnerable, namely, children under five years old, particularly those below the age of two, as well as those females that are pregnant and lactating.

The rural population will be targeted as it is recognized as having a significant malnutritioned populace.

3. Child Health Services Program

Child Health Services Program (CHSP) is improving children's health by increasing availability, access, and utilization of key health services.

The CHSP supports innovative approaches to strengthen the capacity of Ethiopia's public and private sectors to bring high-impact health interventions to reduce child mortality and morbidity.

4. Health Facility Construction and Rehabilitation

The aim of this program is to amplify access to, and improve the quality of health services, by the rehabilitation of existing health facilities and construction of new ones.

The goal is to provide sufficiently equipped, staffed and governed health facilities, customer friendly health facility layout, sustainable equipment maintenance and information technology supported health system.

5. Health Service Extension Program

The Health Service Extension Program aims to train thousands of new Ethiopian Health Extension Workers (HEWs) to work at local community health posts, in order to provide a deliverable system of vital interventions to meet their health needs.

Furthermore, to train the HEW's, a training of trainers system was developed, in which seven hundred faculty members were trained in regional workshops by eighty five professional trainers, and they in turn are now delivering the year long.

Country wide networks of thirty seven accessible vocational institutes are being used for this function. At the time of this writing, twenty hospitals are occupied with hands-on training programs for the HEW's.

6. HIV/AIDS Control and Prevention Program

HIV prevention programs in Ethiopia are interventions that aspire to bring an end to the transmission of HIV.

These programs mainly target the prevention of the transmission of HIV through a harmonizing amalgamation of behavioral, biomedical and structural strategies.

Ethiopian HIV programs takes into account that despite the efforts and progress made by prevention programs around the world, the drop in new HIV infections among adults has slowed in the past ten years, which proves the need for a scale up of services, as well as a sharp increase in funding.

To achieve the highest efficiency, Ethiopian HIV prevention programs aim to target high prevalence regions or 'hot spots', as well as, to meet the needs of proven high-risk groups.

7. Hygiene and Environmental Health Program

The Ethiopia Health Ministry, lately, has experienced an increased level of political will to improve hygiene and environmental health services in Ethiopia.

Crucial policies such as the National Sanitation Strategy and Protocol (NSSP) and the Millennium Sanitation Movement (MSM) are facilitating frameworks that provide the motivation and alignment of all relevant stakeholders to ramp up sanitation coverage and hygiene behavioral change across Ethiopia.

Furthermore, 3 important ministries, namely, the Ministry of Health and Water Resources and the Ministry of Education, have united to initiate the national WASH program, which aims to provide a strategic framework to realize the Ethiopian national vision of universal access to hygiene sanitation.

Some of the Ethiopian WASH program objectives include:

* Boost latrine coverage and guarantee facilities are properly handled, sustained and utilized.
* Support and promote communal solid waste removal sites.
* Advance medical and other waste management systems in Ethiopian public and private health institutions.
* Augment drinking water quality monitoring; and monitor food safety and food processing industries.

8. Malaria Prevention and Control Program

Malaria is a chief public health challenge in Ethiopia, which sees an estimated 52 million or 68% of the population at high risk of contracting malaria.

Malaria transmission in Ethiopia is seasonal and principally unstable, with recurrent and often large-scale epidemics.

The impact of malaria, aside from the health cost, is a major hindrance to social and economic development in Ethiopia.

It causes the loss in numbers of the Ethiopian workforce, not to mention, time lost for both of the sick and the family members, who offer care, which in turn leads to depletion of income as well as school absenteeism.

In response to this, the Ethiopian Ministry of Health (EMOH), Regional Health Bureaus and partners have been actively seeking to unify in order to strengthen access to early, sufficient and equitable services for the Ethiopian population at risk of malaria.

The malaria prevention and control program in Ethiopia is lead by a 5 year National Malaria Prevention and Control Strategic Plan created in line with the objectives of the Ethiopian Health Sector Development Plan (HSDP).

The goal of malaria prevention and control in Ethiopia is to decrease malaria morbidity and malaria related mortality by seventy five percent as compared to the annual averages seen in the period from 2001-2005.

Crucial objective of the Ethiopian malaria prevention program include:

* 100% household coverage with two ITNs per household in all malaria ridden areas.
* Over 85% of the population living in epidemic prone areas covered with indoor residual spraying.
* Above 80% of the population to have access to prompt and effective treatment with artemisin-based combination therapy (ACT).

Significant progress has been made in Ethiopian malaria control in the last few years, with a important input of funds from a number of key donors, the likes of, GFATM, the World Bank, UNICEF, UNITAID, etc.

So far progress reports show the distribution of over 20 million nets with a household coverage of at about 70%.

9. National Nutrition Program

The Ethiopian Health Ministry has created the National Nutrition Program (NNP) to lessen the scale of malnutrition, by coordinating, harmonizing and scaling up the current system in place.

The NNP is an initiative that will be in 2 phases, with a long term plan, that will focus on the most vulnerable, namely, those under the age of five, as well as, pregnant and lactating women and adolescents.

The Ethiopian malnutrition program will also give priority to the rural population while recognizing that major malnutrition exists in low income urban areas.

10. Tuberculosis and Leprosy Prevention and Control

The Tuberculosis and Leprosy Diseases Prevention and Control Program (TLPC), was reorganized in 1994 by the Federal Ministry of Health to incorporate TB and leprosy control activities.

The major objectives of the Ethiopian Tuberculosis and Leprosy Prevention and Control Program are:

* To disrupt transmission of infection, thereby decreasing the incidence of TB and leprosy
* To treat patients in order to attain their cure and wherever possible, complete rehabilitation
* To avert the development of complications caused by both diseases

The strategy of TLPC is: