Ethiopia News

In response to the need for access to life-saving surgical care, the World Health Organization's Emergency and Essential Surgical Care rogram has developed and launched the 'Integrated Management for Emergency and Essential Surgical Care'(IMEESC) toolkit via a mobile phone application. The toolkit will make available key resources in obstetric and surgical care literally at users’ fingertips.

ADDIS ABABA, 11 December 2015 | The World Health Organization (WHO) is working alongside the Ethiopian Ministry of Health and 22 partner organizations to respond to the health needs of 3.6 million people vulnerable to health and nutrition emergencies due to the El Niño weather phenomenon. Humanitarian partners came together in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, today to launch joint plans for the crisis response in 2016.

Emergency and WASH teams of WHO and UNICEF hold regular meetings to discuss the best way of coordinating the two UN agencies’ support to the Government of Ethiopia’s response to the ongoing acute watery diarrhea (AWD) outbreak in the country.  The most recent get-together took place on 9 March, where existing gaps, past successes and shortfalls were identified and discussed to best devise the way forward.

A six-week international training of trainers (ToT) on Planning and Managing Malaria Control Programmes for Health Workers of Anglophone African Countries got concluded successfully in Addis Ababa on 9 October 2015. The World Health Organization (WHO), in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and the Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI) organized the training course that brought together 34 participants from 14 Anglophone countries in the WHO Africa Region.

A Meningitis A Phase III and Measles integrated campaign, launched on 26 October 2015 in Afar, Amhara, Dire Dawa, Hareri, Oromia (East Harerghe and West Harerghe) and Tigray regions, has been completed successfully. Preliminary administrative data in regions where campaign is completed revealed a total of 11,645,517 individuals vaccinated for Men A and 725,469 children vaccinated for Measles showing coverage of 96% and 88% respectively. The campaign was planned for 10 days, but was extended to 2 days in some zones for mop-up activities for reaching children unreached during 10 days.

In a global effort to raise awareness on breast cancer, October has been designated as the Pink Month.  The Pink Month is a month where efforts to educate those concerned about the disease, including early identification and signs and symptoms associated with breast cancer.

On Monday, 14 December 2015, the United Nations (UN) and the Government of Ethiopia signed the fourth United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) that will be in effect for five years, 2016-2020. 

ADDIS ABABA, 16 December 2015 | Ethiopia joins over 130 countries to introduce Inactivated Polio Virus (IPV) vaccine against poliomyelitis.

Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa, attended the 18th General Assembly of the Organization of African First Ladies Against HIV/AIDS (OAFLA) on the sidelines of the 28th African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 31 January 2017.

This year’s OAFLA General Assembly coincided with the commemoration of its anniversary, and was marked under the theme, “Building on 15 years of engagement to harness the demographic dividend of Africa through promoting the needs of adolescents and their access to youth-friendly health services.”

The civil society organizations (CSOs) met in Addis for a full day meeting on 23rd of February, 2016 to discuss their role in holding governments accountable to improve vaccine access and coverage in Africa in line with the Global Vaccine Action Plan. Key conclusions from the meeting as well as the CSOs’ declaration on immunization presented at the Ministerial Conference on Immunization in Africa (MCIA). So far as of march 2016, over 80 organizations endorsed the CSOs’ declaration on immunization to show their commitment to these goals.