Nation to Implement Health Post Upgrading Roadmap

Addis Ababa June 22, 2018 The government is finalizing the preparation of a fifteen years health post roadmap that will be implemented starting from the coming Ethiopian fiscal year, the Ministry of Health disclosed. The roadmap will enable the country to modernize and upgrade the health posts and their service delivery system. Health Extension Program and Primary Health Care Deputy Director at the Ministry, Israel Ataro told ENA that the Ministry is working to revise the health extension program which was launched in 2004. Revising the health extension program includes improving and up grading facilities and services at health posts, scaling up the capacity of health extension workers through several trainings and upgrading infrastructures in health post. “Speaking about the improvement of health post, we are going to implement a health post roadmap that will be implemented over the coming 15 years in all regions of the country”, he said. According to him, more than 60 percent of health posts throughout the country have been damaged due to strained years services without upgrading the facilities and services. Besides, health professionals assigned to health posts across the country lack the necessary updated skill and knowledge that would have helped to provide quality services. He also said that the health post especially in rural areas of the country are facing some challenges due to poor infrastructure such as road development. In this regard, Deputy Director added, the roadmap includes renovating the existing health posts and building a new one in areas that do not have any health posts before. “Our roadmap will make our health posts more advanced and modernized and we will construct and upgrade the already started roadmap projects in areas of the health posts especially in rural areas and we will also starving to improve our electricity and water services in the health posts,” Israel said. Moreover, it will include new kinds of services that have to be provided at health posts. In addition to facilitating the health post roadmap, the ministry is also working to further improve the Ethiopian health extension program by giving trainings for health extension workers, he indicated. He mentioned that the ministry has started to give task based trainings that would help to enhance the performances of health extension workers from level-one and two to level-three and four and it will cover over 40,000 health extension workers in the country. Intending to expand the primary health care system and emphasizing preventive, promotional, and basic curative health services, the government has built more than 20, 000 health posts across the country. According to the World Health Organization Ethiopia is showing remarkable progress in health extension over the last decade. WHO’s report indicated that the country has accomplished the United Nations Millennium Development Goal 4 (MDG4) by reducing child deaths by 67 percent from 204 per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 59 per 1,000 live births three years ahead of scheduled by implementing health extension program.