Ethiopia has one of the lowest health services coverage in the world, at an estimated 61% with wide regional and rural to urban disparities. Seven percent of the national government’s budget is allocated to the health sector for its population of 70 million. Throughout the clinical settings lack of trained healthcare professional staff is a major impediment to optimal patient care and treatment. The ratio of Physicians to population is 1:36,000. The Nurse to population ratio is a mere 1:10000.

Several factors influence the shortage of skilled health care workers in Ethiopia. First, there are not adequate number of training facilities. Second, the effectiveness of these training facilities is severely limited by the shortage of teachers and clinicians. Third, access to well-stocked libraries, learning centers and text books is severely limited.

In the 1980’s thousands of Ethiopians left for the West seeking political and economic freedom. Many educated individuals immigrated in search of better professional and living opportunities. In the last 30 years, 33% of the trained Physicians have left the country at various stages of their career. Other allied health professionals left in comparable numbers.

Now, 20 years later, it is estimated that 250,000-500,000 Ethiopians live outside of the country. The Ethiopians in the Diaspora, while remaining in the West have had an active interest in supporting their colleagues and the health care system in Ethiopia. To this end ENAHPA made the transfer of skills and state of the art technologies to health care professionals in practice and training in Ethiopia, one of its major missions.

In 2003, ENAHPA agreed to collaborate with the Ministry of Health in Ethiopia in the development of human resources in health care. Tapping into its large pool of health care professionas in the Diaspora, ENAHPA began a distance learning program using video teleconferencing technology in collaboration with Bethany Foundation. Thus far, we have completed three short-term training of the trainer modules in HIV medicine and Malaria. In collaboration with the Johns Hopkins University Division of Infectious Diseases, ENAHPA has certified a core group of 21 health care workers in HIV medicine. The core group members have been charged with training others in various public, academic and nongovernmental sectors. In addition, ENAHPA just concluded a training module targeting academic pharmacists whose central role is to train others pharmacists.

ENAHPA plans to expand its distance learning project to include web-based consultation, CD-ROM based content provision and continued video-teleconferencing.

You can help us by providing content, technical expertise, and supportive services.

Please contact Dr. Getachew Asresahegn at getachew@enahpa.org for further information.

Related links:

Advanced Pharmacology of Antiretroviral (ARV) for Pharmacists - "Training the Trainer"