Celebrating Timkat in Ethiopia

Timkat celebrations in Ethiopia are marked by priests dressed in white carrying colorful umbrellas.

January is an important month for Ethiopians.

For starters, the country celebrates Genna, or the Ethiopian Christmas, in early January. According to the ancient Julian calendar, which is used in Ethiopia, Christmas falls on January 7 on the popular Gregorian calendar most of us are familiar with.

The word Gennana, which means “imminent” in Amharic, is a reference to the coming of the Lord Jesus and the freeing of mankind from sin.

Another important holiday is Timkat, which falls on January 20 this year due to the leap year. Timkat is an Othodox Christian celebration of the Ethiopian Epiphany. It marks the baptism of Jesus Christ in the Jordan River.

 Pilgrims come from far and wide to take part in the three-day festival and witness the reenactment of the baptism. All over the country, including in southwestern Ethiopia where WEEMA largely works, large crowds assemble as the religious festivities commence, with spectacular processions, song, dance and prayer.

In the capital, Addis Ababa, the festival is particularly spectacular. The streets are adorned with green, red and yellow to represent the Ethiopian flag and priests walk through the streets holding colorful, richly decorated umbrellas. 

We wish a happy Genna and wonderful Timkat celebration to our friends who are honoring these special days.

End of year gains on cataracts, digital health and hospital sanitation

This 18-year-old boy was one of hundreds whose eyesight was restored by cataract surgery in 2019.

Sure, it’s 2020, but we have a few more end-of-the-year successes we’d like to share, all of them related to improved healthcare delivery in Ethiopia. Among them: 

·      Imagine running a hospital without a laundry machine. Day after day, large piles of soiled linens, surgical towels and hospital gowns need to be washed by hand. Last fall WEEMA installed a new washing machine at the Mudula Primary Hospital, the only hospital in Tembaro. It’s been enormously appreciated, saving staff time and ensuring clean and safe linens for patients and hospital workers.  

·      Based on feedback from a dozen government officials, hospital representatives and other groups at a year-end evaluation meeting, our 2019 Cataract Campaign in Hosanna was a smashing success and plans for a 2020 campaign in February, again in Hosanna, are already well underway. The cataract campaigns are organized every year with the Himalayan Cataract Project. Last year’s five-day campaign restored eyesight for more than 900 Ethiopians. Cataracts are the leading cause of preventable blindness in the country, affecting an estimated 2.4 percent of rural populations.

·      We successfully trained more than 100 local health extension workers (HEWs), midwives and primary health unit directors in Kembata-Tembaro on a digital healthcare tool that has shown enormous promise in improving healthcare delivery services for children and mothers in rural areas. Training sessions were held in Mudula, Hadero and Durame.

 We’ll surely have many more successes to report in 2020!

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.”