Ethiopia Launches Essential Health Service Package for Five Years

Addis Ababa November 12/2019 Essential Health Services Package (EHSP) of Ethiopia that aims to provide access for quality health services without any financial hardship regardless of age, ability to pay, economic status, and geographic location was launched today.

Speaking at the launching ceremony, Health Minister Dr. Amir Aman said defining the essential health service package of the country and identifying priority health interventions is one of the critical strategies.

He added that strengthening the health system and introducing new initiatives are vital to the achievement of Universal Health Coverage.

According to the minister, the Government of Ethiopia will continue to develop critical strategies that potentially lead to universal health coverage.

“We identified the most pressing health challenges and interventions deemed appropriate, affordable, and equitable to address health problems,” he said.

Dr. Amir also expressed his confidence that the EHSP will improve the efficiency of the entire health system and health service delivery in Ethiopia.

“It is my full confidence that we will prevail in meeting the essential health service package by unwavering commitment of our government, ownership of the health programs by the community, enthusiastic service by health workers, and entrusted support of our development partners,” he pointed out.    

The minister stated that the new document is a revised EHSP of Ethiopia initiated by the ministry about three months ago. It is crucial due to the increased demand of health services, evolvement of health service practice as well as demographic and epidemiological changes.

The EHSP is meant to be delivered in the next five years with subsequent regular updates.

The revised document has increased the previous 184 intervention areas to 1084, it was learned.

Despite the great progress, Ethiopia is still facing a high burden of disease (BoD). Thus, the development of EHSP, which defines appropriate priority health services, represents a major strategy to maximize the benefits from demographic dividend by improving health status of the population.

A total of about 95.1 billion USD is needed to implement this and the next package within the next 10 years (2020-2030) based on medium coverage variant.