Ethiopia News

In response to the emergency situation caused by the El Niño weather phenomenon, the World Health Organization (WHO) has deployed a team of experts to work with the WHO Ethiopia Country Office team in coordinating the health response, assessing health impacts and needs, and strengthening disease early warning and outbreak management systems. The WHO Representative for Ethiopia gives overall direction and guidance to the emergency response activities of the newly reorganized emergency response team. 

A global consultation to draw lessons from the development of Single TB and HIV Concept Notes and defining the way forward for joint TB and HIV programming was held in Addis Ababa on 18-20 November 2015.

ADDIS ABABA, 16 November 2015 | Climate change is threatening to exacerbate health problems in Ethiopia, the World Health Organization warns in a new Climate and Health Country Profile 2015, published today. Increased temperatures, intense heatwaves, more extreme rainfall, floods and landslides, are expected to intensify existing challenges of communicable diseases, food insecurity and poverty unless timely action is taken.

Every year cancer claims thousands of lives in Ethiopia. The country responds to the growing burden of cancer by launching a five year cancer control strategy on 26 October 2015 in Adama Town. The Strategy is said to avert the health and economic impact of cancer by focusing mainly on prevention, and early detection.

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.