Southern Ethiopia - Gwent Health Link

Introduction

The charity “Mothers of Africa” was established in 2005 by anaesthetists in Cardiff to support, through education and training, the delivery of obstetric anaesthesia in countries in Sub Saharan Africa. To date, we have established links with Benin and Toga and members of the charity have visited both countries to run short update courses for post graduate anaesthetic nurses and support local anaesthetists with equipment and drugs. The visit to Southern Ethiopia with the Gwent link was undertaken to explore the possibility of running similar courses there in the future. We thus accompanied the Gwent link between 26th October – 5th November.

I was delighted to be invited to join the midwifery team of the Southern Ethiopia Gwent Health Link for the visit to Ethiopia in October/November 2007.

This is my report based on my visit to Ethiopia as part of the Yirgacheffee-Abergavenny community link accompanying the Southern Ethiopia Gwent Health Link in October-November 2007.