Ethiopia News

The United Nations in Ethiopia celebrated the 70th Anniversary of the United Nations in a series of events on 24 October 2015 in the presence of Government and United Nations high level officials, 
the diplomatic community, civil servants, representatives of the public, students, and the United Nations staff and family. 

The celebrations in Ethiopia were themed along the global theme: Stronger UN. Better World. The events highlighted the UN’s contribution to human rights, peace and security, development, health, gender equality, and protecting the planet. 

ADDIS ABABA, 11 November 2015 | Nearly 90 communities, non-governmental (NGOs) and civil society organizations (CSOs) are meeting for a landmark consultation in Addis Ababa today to ramp up efforts to end tuberculosis (TB) - the leading infectious disease killer worldwide along with HIV.

The Hydrotherapy Center established at the Cheshire Services Ethiopia, and which is the first in its kind in Ethiopia was inaugurated in the presence of WHO Representative, Dr. Pierre M'Pele-Kilebou, donors and contributors to the center, guest Rotarians from the USA and Canada, and other polio partners on Monday, 5 October 2015.  Unveiling was done by W/ro Mintwab Abebe, widow of Mr Nahusenay Araya, former District Governor (DG) of Rotary Club.

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.  

The Ethiopia Ministry of Health planned to conduct a Measles vaccination in a next few weeks in a high risk woredas of Oromia, Amhara, Afar, Somali, Tigray, SNNPR, Harari, Gambella and Benishangul Gumuz regions and Dire Dawa City Administration. The campaign aimed to respond to the measles outbreaks occurred in some localities of the country.

The national level command post decided to integrate measles campaign with the last polio NID with tOPV before the switch to bOPV to use the advantage of operational cost of polio budget and the preparatory activities are underway.

Addis Ababa, 22 February 2017 - The World Health Organization Country Office in Ethiopia in collaboration with the Global Leprosy Programme (GLP) organized a training of consultants on the Global Leprosy Strategy 2016-2020 to support Global Leprosy Program implementation at country level. The training took place in Addis Ababa, from 13-17 February 2017, and brought together Leprosy, Case Management NTD and Public Health Experts from WHO African Region as well as NTD/NPOs from 7 WHO country Offices (Ethiopia, DRC, Sudan, Mozambique, Madagascar, Bangladesh and Indonesia).

Ethiopia successfully responded to the Meningitis C outbreak in Gambella, one of the nine national regional states of Ethiopia located in the western part of the country. The outbreak has begun in October 2015 and it has come to an end after 6 - 7 weeks (October 18-Dec, 2015). A total of 13 suspected meningitis cases were detected and of these four cases were found to be confirmed meningococcal meningitis sero-group C cases, from Itang special woredas, kule refugee camp where all affected groups were above five years.

On 23 February 2017, the World Health Organization Ethiopia Country Office conducted a one-day validation workshop of the Country Cooperation Strategy (CCS) for the period 2016-2020, in Addis Ababa. The objective of this workshop was to validate the final draft of WHO Ethiopia’s CCS 2016-2020 with the Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH) and development partners. The workshop was attended by experts from FMoH, CDC, UNICEF, UNAIDS and UNFPA.

Immunization advocates were part of the first ever Ministerial Conference on Immunization in Africa (MCIA) that brought many people together including leaders, health and Finance Ministers, technical experts, policymakers, donors and medias.  This article will presents you the voice of few advocates, who have been participated on MCIA, and showed their dedication, commitment and energy to continue promoting immunization in Africa.