Boosting digital health in Ethiopia

Health extension worker using digital health tool with a mother and son in Tembaro.

Boosting Digital Healthcare in Ethiopia

 WEEMA is joining forces with the Ethiopian government to expand digital healthcare services across the country.

 Over the past 2½ years, WEEMA and D-tree International have developed and distributed a mobile healthcare tool that is helping 100 local health extension workers (HEWs) in the Tembaro and Hadero districts diagnose childhood illnesses like diarrhea, pneumonia, and malaria. This month, WEEMA received a $100,000 grant from the IZUMI Foundation to help the government scale up a similar effort in four more districts in the Kembata-Tembaro Zone. Judging from the performance of our initiative with D-tree, the expanded digital program will mean better healthcare services and healthier children and families across most of the region, which has nearly one million people.

 Despite big improvements in recent decades, child and maternal mortality rates are still high in Ethiopia, with an estimated 15,000 children and 830 women dying every day from preventable or treatable causes.

 The new project is focused on a digital healthcare tool – known as the Electronic Community Health Information System (eCHIS) – developed by the Federal Ministry of Health. The mobile tool, which the government hopes to train 38,000 HEWs to use in the next five years, provides easy-to-access information on a broad array of medical issues that Ethiopian children and their families face. 

Over the next two years, WEEMA, in partnership with D-tree, will train the existing 100 HEWs in Tembaro and Hadero on the new government tool, along with 150 additional HEWs in other districts of Kembata-Tembaro. The project will be critical in helping the government refine and fine-tune the rollout of the eCHIS system across the country.

Launch meeting this month for the expansion of digital health programs in Kembata-Tembaro.

Delivering better health care to more Ethiopians

Kurabachew Abiyu providing technical support to a health extension worker

Kurabachew Abiyu – Delivering Better Health Care to More Ethiopians  

When he was just a one-year-old child, Kurabachew Abiyu was hospitalized at Jimma General Hospital with a serious illness. He was treated and fully recovered. Then, as a young adult, a close friend developed a software program that tracked patient visits at hospitals.

Those two events had enormous influence in Kurabachew’s career – first his choice to become a healthcare professional and second, his appreciation of technology – whether with software or mobile phones – to improve medical delivery services. He is now utilizing his expertise as WEEMA’s health Program Facilitator.

“When my mother told me that I was severely ill and had to be admitted to the hospital, it made me want to grow up to be a medical doctor,” said Kurabachew, who was born in Oromia but spent most of his childhood in Tembaro.

After graduating from Wolaita Sodo University with a public health degree, he helped run the Ambukuna Health Center in Tembaro. The experience brought him into contact with WEEMA, which was developing a mobile-phone-based medical tool, along with training, to help local health extension workers (HEWs) work more effectively in the field. “I think I was the first person to collaborate with WEEMA on the mHealth project,” said Kurabachew, of the digital tool that is now being used by over 140 health care workers and supervisors across the Tembaro and Hadero districts. 

The mobile-phone tool provides easy-to-use information, including videos, for diagnosing and treating key pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, and other common childhood illnesses. Health workers using the tool say it helps them deliver services more quickly and with fewer mistakes - resulting in healthier children.

Today, 18 months into his WEEMA job, Kurabachew has a larger portfolio of responsibilities, including clinics and hospitals, as well as public schools. And his scope of work is broader, ranging from child and maternal healthcare to menstrual health.

Kurabachew couldn’t be happier. “My main source of happiness is to help people,” he says, “so joining WEEMA, an organization that is aiding and empowering needy people, is like a dream becoming perfectly true.”

WEEMA'S 2018 Cataract Campaign

WEEMA has performed cataract surgeries on over 1,000 eyes during our 2018 Cataract Campaign!

We are hosting this campaign in partnership with Himalayan Cataract Project in Hossana. Last year, the campaign screened over 10,000 people in the Hadiya Zone and performed 1,000 surgeries.

We reached our goal again this year and restored sight to 828 patients in just 4 days!

International Day for Maternal Health and Rights

Maternal health is one of the main focuses of WEEMA's medical work and no one knows its importance better than the WEEMA's midwives! 

Our five midwives have now graduated from Hamlin College of Midwifery and are currently working at rural health centers in the Kembata-Tembaro Zone. This midwives are providing highly skilled maternity services as well as mentoring to their health center colleagues in Hodo, Ambikuna, Gaecha, and Hadero Health Centers.

Thank you to our midwives for their tireless work keeping moms and babies safe!

Happy World Health Worker Week!

We're taking this opportunity to acknowledge and thank all of the global health workers who work tirelessly every day to care for families around the world.  We appreciate you!

Learn more about World Health Worker Week: April 1-7, 2018

WEEMA truly values the dedication and commitment of Ethiopia's frontline health care workers, Health Extension Workers (HEWs). Together, in partnership with D-Tree International and Ethiopia's Ministry of Health, we are developing and implementing a comprehensive mobile tool to empower these women to provide high quality maternal child health care.  While our pilot program is located in the Kembata-Temabro Zone, we plan to see this program scale to all 35,000 HEWs serving rural communities throughout Ethiopia.   HEWs- with these phones in hand- save lives.