Ethiopia

Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in Africa and access to health facilities is limited. Malaria epidemics are common, causing high mortality and morbidity every year. WHO/AFRO estimates that 4 to 5 million cases of malaria occur annually, with over 150,000 in Ethiopia alone. HIV/AIDS is at epidemic levels. The HHS/CDC Global AIDS Program and the Ethiopian MOH and Demographic Health Survey (DHS) report, as of 2010, a national adult prevalence rate to be estimated at 2.4%, with 1.2 million HIV-infected. The UNAIDS and Ethiopian MOH report that an estimated 80,000 are children under the age of 15 and 90,300 are pregnant women.  Ethiopia is one of the US President's Emergency Plan Emergence Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) 15 focus countries receiving support comprehensive HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care programs.

The Johns Hopkins CCGHE is determined to relieve some of the burden that disease places on the Ethiopian population. Since 2005, we have provided bi-weekly HIV Clinical Care Discussion to Ethiopian health workers and have discussed 261 cases as of May 1, 2012.  Initially, these discussions were transmitted from JHU CCGHE via telemedicine to the World Bank Global Distance Learning Center (GDLN) at the Civil Service College in Addis Abbaba.  In 2009, JHU supported the development of distance learning centers within the local Ministry of Education Universities and our lectures/discussions are now broadcast directly to Addis Ababa University (AAU) College of Health Sciences (CHS), Hawassa University, Jimma University CHS, as well as Arba Minch Hospital.  In the United States, infectious disease experts from JHU, Mayo Clinic, East Carolina University and NIH participate regularly in these discussions.  Additional courses, relevant to other Ethiopian healthcare issues, have been developed and include the recently deployed "Confronting Gender-Based Violence".  Health workers in Tanzania are also tuning into these discussions.

The CCGHE and JHPIEGO, a Johns Hopkins affiliate with a country office in Ethiopia worked together with Addis Ababa University to deploy an online course, Pharmacologic Management of HIV/AIDS in Ethiopia.  A selection of lectures from that course are available for viewing.  The course contains 17 lectures by experts at Johns Hopkins and was offered to 35 pharmacy providers at Addis Ababa University, Jimma University, and Gondar University in spring 2009. 

 JHU CCGHE also provides support to the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI)–Ethiopia by hosting joint MEPI Grand Rounds with MEPI-Uganda focusing on HIV and Infectious Disease topics relevant to East Africa (link).  Under the MEPI-Ethiopia AAU-JHU partnership, a new e-learning initiative is being developed at AAU CHS and will include training on faculty in content capture and developing courses for on-line deployment.