01 November 2007

Ethiopian Diaspora Supports Health Care Back Home

A young Ethiopian boy begs for money in Addis Ababa.

Jim Fisher-Thompson

International aid by the United States now totals more than $26 billion a year, but philanthropic giving by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) like the Ethiopian Health Support Foundation also is making significant contributions toward meeting the development and humanitarian needs of poorer countries.

The foundation, established and operated by members of the Ethiopian diaspora in the United States, helped set up the Saint Yared Higher Clinic in Addis Ababa in 2006 and plans to build a general hospital with 100 to 200 beds in the near future.

The foundation’s activities and the challenges of providing health care in Ethiopia were the subject of an address by former U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia David Shinn, who spoke to the group on May 19, 2007, in Kansas City, Missouri.

An Ethiopian child receives an oral polio vaccine near Butajira, south of the capital, Addis Ababa.

“For all of its beauty and hard-working people, Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world,” Shinn said. The country has only about three physicians per 100,000 people, and life expectancy at birth is 49 for males and 51 for females, he added.

Ethiopia’s almost nonexistent health care system is strained by an annual birth rate of 2.3 percent, which increases the population by 2 million every year, said Shinn, who is now an adjunct professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.

The Saint Yared Higher Clinic in Addis Ababa is popular, Shinn said, because it has an active program of visiting doctors and nurses, including a team from Missouri, who provide health care services at the clinic and training at the nursing school. In addition, the clinic provides voluntary comprehensive health services to an orphanage that serves 200 children.

Currently, the Ethiopian Health Support Foundation is seeking financial support to keep the clinic operating, build the planned general hospital, and pay transportation costs for shipping in-kind donations of medical equipment to Ethiopia, Shinn said.

As a long-term goal, the foundation is helping to develop the Saint Yared Health Maintenance Plan, which is designed to play a role in revolutionizing the health care system in Ethiopia, he added.

Like many U.S. philanthropic NGOs, the Ethiopian Health Support Foundation has no paid staff members. All of its workers are volunteers, and every dollar donated goes directly to support health care facilities in Ethiopia.

— Jim Fisher-Thompson is a staff writer for the Bureau of International Information Programs. This article originally appeared on usinfo.state.gov.

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)