Project description

Title: Health centres for Ethiopia
Commissioned by: Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health and ten regional health bureaus
Country: Ethiopia
Lead executing agency: GTZ IS Ethiopia
Overall term: 2007 to 2011

Context

Smaller than hospitals, health centres are at the front line of healthcare in Ethiopia. Most of them cope without doctors, relying instead on health officers and nurses to provide basic services. More than 85 % of Ethiopians live in rural areas. If they need medical services, many have to walk or be carried a long way to the nearest health facility.

As part of its Health Sector Development Programme, the Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health is working to improve access to primary healthcare. To support this, the ministry has commissioned GIZ IS to manage the construction of 490 new health centres, many of which are in remote and inaccessible areas of the country.

Objective

490 health centres have been constructed in rural Ethiopia to improve access to health services throughout the country. At the same time, construction companies have learned cost-efficient construction techniques which they can use in their future work to supply simple but good quality buildings.

Approach

Small-scale Ethiopian construction companies are building the centres, while GIZ IS helps them work more efficiently, with better management and through bulk procurement of materials. GIZ ensures the buildings are appropriately planned and designed, and that the construction work is effectively supervised.

The new health centres are being constructed using a simple, modular building technique, which is labour-intensive and creates jobs for the local communities in all the federal regions. By involving more than 400 local and regional construction companies in building the centres, GIZ IS ensures that capacity development is an integral part of the programme.

With hundreds of new health centres under construction, the Ministry of Health is now also raising the number of healthcare service personnel by increasing the availability of training. Both measures are part of the Government of Ethiopia’s Health Sector Development Programme, which aims to achieve Millennium Development Goals 4, 5 and 6 (improving child and maternal health, and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases) by accelerating the expansion of primary healthcare coverage.

Results achieved so far

The project to provide health centres for Ethiopia has dramatically improved the access of Ethiopia's rural population to health services.

• Over EUR 50 million of the budget for the health centre programme has been contracted to local and regional enterprises and cooperatives. Consequently, funds do not leave the country but continue to circulate, boosting local firms and the Ethiopian construction sector.
• By 2009, some 30,000 health extension workers had been trained and deployed at the newly built village health centres where they now provide basic curative and preventive health services.
• By July 2011, around 470 health centres had been constructed and were ready for service.