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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"
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