The Potentials of Family Medicine in Improving Health Care Access and Equity in Ethiopia

With an estimated 82 million inhabitants, Ethiopia is the second most populous country in Sub-Saharan Africa and has more than 85% living in the rural areas. The country has among the highest under-five and maternal mortality rates which partly arise from the poor and inequitable access to proven preventive and curative services and poorly staffed health facilities.

Like many low-income countries, Ethiopia has suffered from high attrition of human resources for health, low health manpower production, geographical imbalance and an uneven skill mix of health workers which has put the rural and less wealthy segment of the population at increased health risks.

Cognizant of this, the government of Ethiopia has put great emphasis on the expansion of health service training institutions in order to increase the number of health workers to meet the needs of the ever-growing population of the country. Given the current challenges in availing comprehensive obstetric and surgical care in many district hospitals and health centers in Ethiopia, family medicine may be considered as one of the promising training programs that can help equip physicians with the necessary knowledge and skills.

The family physician in Ethiopia can play multiple roles in leading the primary health care team, ensuring primary, continuing, and comprehensive care of high quality to individuals, families and communities.

Against this background, Addis Ababa University has collaborated with the University of Toronto and University of Wisconsin to launch a three year residency program in family medicine in the year 2012.

The initiative is informed by a series of meetings between relevant stakeholders (including the Federal Ministry of Health), and a needs assessment survey that were instrumental to design a context specific curriculum. Implications of the new family medicine residency training program in improving access and quality of priority public health challenges will be discussed.