Southern Ethiopia - Gwent Health Link

Website for the link (www.ethiopiagwentlink.org)

In 2006, thanks to the hard work by Vishnu Chandrabalan, our youngest link member, we have been able to start a website for the link. Although in its infancy and a lot more work needs to be done, the website has earned praise from several people and will no doubt help the link in attracting more support.

Health Forum

Within the website a health forum has been started. Aim of this to promote interaction between health care professionals in sub Saharan Africa, who has very little access to training/teaching materials, with the UK experts to address their learning needs and help with difficult clinical issues. The health forum was introduced to the colleagues in Ethiopia in October 2006 but its success will depend on the active participation of the link members with various expertises.

Presentations

I presented at the Annual Scientific meeting of the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland (ASGBI) in Edinburgh in May 2006 and at the German Association of Tropical Surgery (DTC) in Munich in September 2006 on the subject of skills training of non doctors in countries such as Ethiopia. Since then the ASGBI and the Royal College of Surgeons of England has shown interest in our work of skills training of the non doctor frontline health professionals. DTC has also shown interest in collaborating with us in Ethiopia.
Peter Dale made a presentation about our link at the annual meeting of the International Child Health Conference which was highly appreciated.

Our link’s success so far has been as a result of continuous hard work together between our link members in Gwent, THET and our colleagues in Ethiopia especially Dr Aberra, our link coordinator. In 2006 Dr Yifru, Dean of Hwassa Medical College joined the link as assistant coordinator. From early 2007 our link has arranged sponsorship for Dr Aberra to go to India for a year in his sabbatical for Specialist Urology training. Dr Yifru is taking over the role of Coordinator in Dr Aberra’s absence.

Our link has always been keen to support our colleagues working in difficult situation at the frontline in resource poor settings in rural Ethiopia. In 2006 we have seen recognition of our link’s work by the local University, Regional Health Bureau and Ethiopian Government as well as by the country office of WHO in Ethiopia. Locally our link is supported by the trust and the community and recognised by the Welsh Assembly.

In 2007 we are hoping to continue working in the areas already well established. We are hoping to gain support from large national organisations such as ASGBI and international organisations such as WHO and DTC in our effort to expand training of the non doctor front line health workers. We are also hoping to expand our activity by supporting few teaching health centres in SNNPR to develop as model health centres to gain full confidence of the local population in the health care facility.