Southern Ethiopia - Gwent Health Link

Most of the population in Ethiopia lives in rural communities. The primary unit of health care delivery to these people is the health centre. The health centres are usually staffed by young, inexperienced health officers, nurses and midwives. Practical training for these front-line health professionals is very limited and they often work in complete professional isolation.

The exemplar health centre project is in line with the link's philosophy of improving health care provision in rural communities and relates to the Millenium Development Goals as well as the Ethiopian government's health sector strategic plan. We, along with our Ethiopian partners, have identified three health centres in the SNNPR region of Southern Ethiopia. The health centres at Wondo-Genet, Alaba and Yirgacheffee each serve a rural population of over 100,000 outside Hawassa. We have committed our long term support to these health centres both in terms of staff training as well as resources.

The following video clip was recorded at Yirgacheffee health centre in October 2007 and shows Dr. Biku Ghosh explaining the basic principles behind the exemplar health centre project.

After much planning and fund-raising, this project started in October 2007. We conducted on-site skills training for the staff. We donated a large amount of essential surgical and obstetric equipment as well as oxygen concentrators for the health centres. We installed 2 computers at each health centre to be used exclusively as electronic medical libraries and have trained the staff to use them.

Local Woreda (council) members have been actively involved in this project and have agreed to continue to work with us as well as the health centre staff to improve health care provision for the community. A 'memorandum of understanding' was signed to this effect. We have since revisited the health centres every six months to donate more material resources, continue on-site training, update the electronic libraries as well as evaluate the progress made so far.

We have donated the first motorcycle ambulances in Ethiopia. Two motorcycle ambulances, one each to Yirgacheffee and Halaba, will be used for transporting critically ill patients to the district hospital. We will donate the thrid motorcyce ambulance for Wondogent in early 2009. Motorcycle ambulances have a proven role in Africa and we hope that other organisations will follow.

 We have supported the formation of the Gold Star Abergavenny-Yirgacheffe community link that aims to improve the wider determinants of health like poverty, education, sanitation, clean water, etc.