Health in Ethiopia has improved markedly since the early 2000s, with government leadership playing a key role in mobilizing resources and ensuring that they are used effectively. A central feature of the sector is the priority given to the Health Extension Programme, which delivers cost-effective basic services that enhance equity and provide care to millions of women, men and children. The development and delivery of the Health Extension Program, and its lasting success, is an example of how a low-income country can still improve access to health services with creativity and dedication.
The Human Rights Measurement Initiative finds that Ethiopia is fulfilling 83.3% of what it should be fulfilling for the right to health based on its level of income. When looking at the right to health with respect to children, Ethiopia achieves 94.5% of what is expected based on its current income. In regards to the right to health amongst the adult population, the country achieves only 90.6% of what is expected based on the nation's level of income. Ethiopia falls into the "very bad" category when evaluating the right to reproductive health because the nation is fulfilling only 64.8% of what the nation is expected to achieve based on the resources (income) it has available.
Overview
Ethiopia is the second most populous country in sub-Saharan Africa, with a population of over 120 million people. As of the end of 2003, the United Nations (UN) reported that 4.4% of adults were infected with human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS); other estimates of the rate of infection ranged from a low of 7% to a high of 18%. Whatever the actual rate, the prevalence of HIV/AIDS contributed to falling life expectancy since the early 1990s. According to the Ministry of Health Ethiopia, one-third of current young adult deaths are AIDS-related. Malnutrition is widespread, especially among children, as is food insecurity. Because of growing population pressure on agricultural and pastoral land, soil degradation, and severe droughts that have occurred each decade since the 1970s, per capita food production is declining. According to the UN and the World Bank, Ethiopia in 2005 suffered from a structural food deficit such that even in the most productive years, at least 5 million Ethiopians require food relief.
The fact that the country achieved MDG 4, reducing the child mortality and the decline of HIV mortality has helped life expectancy to increase to 65.2 years in 2015 from 46.6 years in 1990. The Under 5 mortality rate and Infant mortality rate dropped from 203 and 122 in 1990 to 61.3 and 41.4 in 2015. The ministry of health has achieved this through the Health Extension Program by using a special implementation platform called Women Development Army.
Ethiopia experiences a triple burden of disease mainly attributed to communicable infectious diseases and nutritional deficiencies, NCD and traffic accident. Shortage and high turnover of human resource and inadequacy of essential drugs and supplies have also contributed to the burden. However, there has been encouraging improvements in the coverage and utilization of the health service over the periods of implementation of Health Sector Development Plan, the health chapter of the national poverty reduction strategy, which aims to increase immunization coverage and decrease under-five mortality at large. The health service currently reaches about 72% of the population and The Federal Ministry of Health aims to reach 85% of the population by 2009 through the Health Extension Program (HEP) [1]. The HEP is designed to deliver health promotion, immunization and other disease prevention measures along with a limited number of high-impact curative interventions.
Life expectancy
A new measure of expected human capital calculated for 195 countries from 1990 to 2016 and defined for each birth cohort as the expected years lived from age 20 to 64 years and adjusted for educational attainment, learning or education quality, and functional health status was published by the Lancet in September 2018. Ethiopia had the lowest level of expected human capital among the 20 largest countries with less than 5 health, education, and learning-adjusted expected years lived between age 20 and 64 years. This put it in 175th place, an improvement over its position in 1990 when it was 189th.
Life expectancy is better in cities compared to rural areas, but there have been significant improvements witnessed throughout the country as of 2016, the average Ethiopian living to be 62.2 years old, according to a UNDP report.