IntraHealth International

Because Health Workers Save Lives

Where We Work > Africa > Ethiopia

Ethiopia

As the second-most populous African nation and the twelfth poorest country globally, Ethiopia strains to provide health care for its people, nearly one million of whom live with HIV. To stop the further spread of HIV, primary prevention is crucial. Programs that enable women to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission are an essential part of comprehensive primary prevention. More than 310,000 Ethiopian adults living with HIV do not have the antiretroviral drugs they need to stay healthy. Among those Ethiopians living with HIV, some 66,000 pregnant women are not getting the care they need to prevent HIV transmission to their infants during pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding¹. Neonatal HIV infections contribute to the country’s infant mortality rate—one of the highest in the world—and to the growing HIV epidemic.

For more than seven years, IntraHealth International has worked in Ethiopia to curb the spread of HIV from mother to child by ensuring that pregnant women receive antenatal HIV counseling and testing and, if necessary, antiretroviral therapy and follow-up care for themselves and their newborns. Prior to IntraHealth’s involvement, such services were not available at health centers anywhere in the country; with USAID support, between 2003 and 2009, IntraHealth and its partners made these services available at 448 health facilities.

In addition to expanding the availability of services, IntraHealth organized peer-to-peer support groups—called Mothers’ Support Groups—for women living with HIV, to help them care for themselves and their children. This community-based program was spearheaded by the USAID-funded Hareg Project and further expanded by IntraHealth through the Capacity Project. IntraHealth helped develop a training manual to teach women who volunteered how to mentor other mothers or to act as site coordinators, and launched a national media campaign about the challenges women living with HIV and their families face. At the close of the Capacity Project in 2009, approximately 63 sites were hosting Mothers’ Support Groups, enrolling more than 1,300 women.

Community Prevention of Mother-to-Child HIV Transmission Project

In 2009, IntraHealth began a project that employs a community-based approach to expand the availability of high-quality maternal, pediatric, and HIV/AIDS care. In collaboration with partners, IntraHealth trains and supports community health workers to monitor and care for patients living with HIV. The project also builds on IntraHealth’s extensive experience in Ethiopia to:

Better support and manage community-based prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) services through close collaboration with local and regional health offices and community-based organizations
Make maternal and child health and PMTCT services more widely available by improving the capacity of community- and facility-based health workers to provide quality care
Improve the coordination and referral network between and among service providers in communities and at health posts, health centers, and hospitals
Reach out to communities to encourage people to use maternal, pediatric, and PMTCT services.

IntraHealth’s programs also examine how women’s health care decisions are affected by stigma and discrimination based on HIV status, and tailor counseling to address these concerns. IntraHealth supports health care interventions that are designed and managed locally and that build on best practices and local evidence. To establish sustainable services, IntraHealth seeks to bolster the existing health care infrastructure and encourage community input and involvement.

Through CapacityPlus, the global project focused on strengthening the health workforce, IntraHealth also tested an effective, inexpensive system to deliver educational content to health workers in Ethiopia via mobile phones and Internet. The pilot course using the SpacedEd platform taught participants the practices surrounding feeding of infants and young children born to HIV-positive mothers. SpacedEd is a learning methodology developed at Harvard Medical School that has been shown in the developed world to improve learning and change clinician behavior. The pilot course revealed a great deal of acceptability of the SpacedEd platform in Ethiopia and enabled the refinement of the platform to the developing country context.

Other Current Projects

CapacityPlus (funded by USAID, led by IntraHealth)
Fistula Care Project (funded by USAID, supporting partner to EngenderHealth)

Past Projects

HIV/AIDS Care and Support Program (funded by USAID, supporting partner to Management Sciences for Health)
Preventive Care Package (funded by USAID, supporting partner to Population Services International)
Fenote Tesfa (PC4) Project (funded by USAID, supporting partner to Abt Associates)
Capacity Project (funded by USAID, led by IntraHealth)
ACQUIRE Project (funded by USAID, supporting partner to EngenderHealth)
PRIME II Project (funded by USAID, led by IntraHealth)
Hareg Project (funded by USAID, led by IntraHealth)
Extending Service Delivery Project (funded by USAID, supporting partner to Pathfinder International