Southern Ethiopia - Gwent Health Link

The Southern Ethiopia Gwent Health Link

The Link is a non profit making partnership between healthcare personnel in southern Ethiopia and in south Wales. It was founded in 2000 with the support of the Tropical Health and Education Trust (THET), initially as the Dilla/Abergavenny Link but the remit subsequently broadened with training workshops, equipment and support being provided to a wider area. Mr Biku Ghosh, Consultant Surgeon at Neville Hall Hospital, Abergavenny, co-ordinates the Gwent team, members of which have collective expertise in surgery, anaesthetics, paediatrics, accident and emergency/trauma care, midwifery, information technology, infection control, public health, primary care, laboratory skills, management, teaching, research and quality assurance. The majority of the team are employees of Gwent Healthcare NHS Trust. Dr Aberra Gobeze, Assistant Professor of Surgery at Hawassa College of Health Sciences heads the Southern Ethiopia team. The Southern Ethiopia team has skills in surgery, obstetrics, midwifery, nursing, teaching, urology, laboratory science and primary care. A Gwent team of approximately eight to twelve healthcare professionals visits Ethiopia twice a year to work with Ethiopian partners, supply equipment, deliver requested training and discuss and assess needs for ongoing support. There is regular telephone and email contact between visits. Further details of the work of the Link and past visit reports may be seen at www.ethiopiagwentlink.org

The Gwent team has for a number of years provided workshops for laboratory staff, health officers and doctors and more recently, also for clinical nurses and midwives. Workshops are held in Hwassa College of Health Sciences in Awassa. They are led by the Gwent team but are planned with Ethiopian colleagues who also have input into their teaching and organisation. Workshop participants come from all areas of SNNPR with some travelling great distances, as much as one thousand kilometres, to attend. The majority work in rural environments in Health Centres or small hospitals. Workshops are offered free of charge and the Link pays participants a daily allowance to cover travel, accommodation and subsistence costs. Workshop provision will continue in parallel with the new project on developing three rural Health Centres into models of best practice.

The Link has also provided teaching resources to supplement the limited range available to healthcare students and teachers in Hwassa College of Health Sciences and has helped to set up a skills laboratory in the college. It has given equipment to Dilla and other small hospitals and sponsored a senior doctor to undertake a course in urology in India. He is now the only qualified urologist for the SNNPR with a population of fifteen million people.

The current (from November 2007) focus of the Link’s activities is on working with the Health Centres in the villages of Yirgacheffe, Alaba and Wondogenet with the aim of enabling each to develop into a ‘Centre of Excellence/Exemplar Health Centre’.