Introduction:

Ethiopia is experiencing an increase in demand for improved access to primary care and the corresponding referral system and speciality and higher quality health care, necessary in a context marked by conflict, epidemiological transition, rapid urbanisation, and broad social and economic changes occurring in the country.

The Joint European Initiative to Strengthen Medical Specialization in Ethiopia is a project of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS), and the European Union, in close collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Health of Ethiopia (FMoH). The aim is to support the capacity of the Ethiopian Health System to recover from conflict and crisis, making it more resilient to future shocks.

This initiative is an exercise of complementarity, harmonisation, alignment and policy dialogue – the essence of the Team Europe Approach - emphasising the commitment of the European Union and the Member States to strengthen Universal Health Coverage and public health systems as a basis for reducing inequalities and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, with specific attention to post-conflict recovery and capacity building in the health sector.

Objectives:

• The project focuses on three main areas of intervention, mostly mirroring the national Ethiopian Medical Specialization Programme.

More specifically, the project seeks to:     

• Improve human resources development in eight targeted hospitals, through specialized training.
• Improve infrastructure for specialized medicine and provision of quality and context-based equipment.
• Reinforce hospital management capacities identified as a gap by the Government.