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 the peripheries rather than focussing on the major cities/towns. We, alongwith our local partners, have identified three health centres in the SNNPR region of Southern Ethiopia. They are the Wondo-Genet, Alaba, Yirgacheffee and Yirgalem health centres. We have committed our long term support to these health centres both in terms of staff training as well as resources.

After much planning and fund-raising, this project started in October 2007. We visited all the three health centres and conducted on-site skills training for the staff. We also donated a large amount of essential surgical and obstetric equipment as well as oxygen concentrators for the health centres. We also installed 2 computers at each health centre exclusively for e-learning purposes. These have been loaded with a wide variety of training materials.

Local Woreda (council) members were present during these presentations and agreed to continue to work together with the health centre staff and the link in improving health care provision in these health centres. We intend to strengthen these links through further visits early next year.

Read the latest news about the link's visit to the Exemplar Health Centres in MArch 2008 here. 

The following video clip (with coughing, phones ringing, children and birds in the background) was shot at Yirgacheffee health centre and shows Dr. Biku Ghosh explaining the basic principles behind the exemplar health centre project.