Ethiopia Health - Research Paper Example

Ethiopia Health Affiliation Ethiopia Health Insufficient resources in Ethiopia have affected health status in Ethiopia negatively. As a result, Ethiopia has been ranked as one of the poorest countries in the world with her Gross National Income (GNI) per capita of US$ 100 (US$ 668 in buying –PPP-parity terms) which is a poor comparison with for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) that has per capita GNI of US$450 (PPP US$ 1,683) in the year 2002. It is further compared with the world average of US$5,080 (PPP US$ 7,415) and shows that its economic is much below average as shown by World Development Indicator, 2003. Due to this unfavorable economic status, Ethiopia has slugged to improve the health status to its population because there are no sufficient funds to allocate to the health care to improve its services to people in Ethiopia. On the other hand, for the last ten years from 1991, Ethiopia has been in struggle to try to undertake economic reforms. Unfortunately, it has been facing many challenges. For example, from 1998-2000, the Ethio-Eritrean Border chaos affected negatively the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Moreover, in 2003, her economy faced a stiff decline resulting to a negative economic growth due to severe drought that affected 14 million people because the drought lowered their ability to productivity. Population Pressure Ethiopia has been experiencing a rapid growing population becoming the second highly populated country in Sub-Sahara Africa with a population of 69.1 million as in 2003. This has been caused by the life expectancy at birth being 42 years faintly lower than the SSA average of 45 years. Therefore, young population has been at an increasing rate with 44 percent young people under the age of 15 years. This has increased the dependency ratio of young population to the adult population as well as a future swift exponential population growth with an average of 2 million people per year as from 2000-2005. On the other hand, with 60 percent women supposed to be taking family planning pills, only 34 percent of their husband allow them take the contraceptives. This shows poor involvement of men in family planning contributing to high birth rate at the life expectancy of birth. However, poor health status have been linked with urban areas that show a population growth of 4.1 percent related to a growth of only 1.9 percent in rural areas. Additionally increasingly internal migration has also fuelled urban population growth. Rapid growth of population has nulled the government effort to provide basic social services. As a result, most of the Ethiopian are subjected to contaminated water and poor sanitation hence increasing the incidence of illness of individuals (morbidity rate) in the densely populated areas. This is an indication by health indicator that shows only 15 percent of Ethiopian have access to better sanitation compared to the Sub-Sahara Africa average of 55 percent while the access to clean water is at 24 percent compared to that of SSA at an average of 55 percent. High Illiteracy Level Statistics shows that fifty-nine percent of the adult population in Ethiopia is illiterate. This is a higher percent compared to Sub- Sahara Africa that has an average of 36 percent. Female population forms the higher percent of illiteracy. The higher rate of illiteracy affecting the women, this has greatly affected the traditional society practiced in Ethiopia where the women’ social status is still low. For example, women are regarded to be fully responsible in nurturing young population hence due to their ignorance caused by their illiteracy they take no caution to priorities the health of their children. Women have no knowledge important in their role in fertility. As a result, there is high child morality caused by birth interval and low birth weight. Religion Religion is strongly associated with controlling the mortality rate of children and mothers. For example, among Orthodox Christians, there is lower child mortality rate of children of older women since they strongly value medication of expecting mothers by ensuring mothers receive ANC tetanus and have antenatal care and delivery by trained professionals hence have a lower mortality rate of maternal and children compared to other religions. Religion is associated with mortality of women and children because some religion believes that there is no need of medication at the hospitals since their faith is enough to get healed. Therefore, diseases that require instant cure ends up killing them. Other religions believe infection of a severe disease is a punishment from their God and one should not try to avoid it. As a result, religion shows to be contributing to mortality rate of Ethiopia due to their ignorance on the religion. Use of modern method of family planning is often practiced among Orthodox Christians compared to Muslims hence religion also contributes to population increase. Probability of Dying Under Five Years There is a high probability of children under five years to die in Ethiopia. This has been caused by low immunization performance in Ethiopia. Health indicator shows that infant percent of 12-23 months old have received one or more EPI vaccines only during the campaign through polio eradication program that reflected a decrease in child mortality rate by immunization ( such as DPT3 which, according to 2000 DHS and MIS data were 21 and 42 percent respectively). Otherwise, Ethiopians remain behind when it comes to normal children vaccination without being forced during the campaign shown by the Ethiopian health system failure to ensure continuity of services due to often dropout rate between the first and subsequent vaccination of children. On the other hand, health indicator report shows that 79 percent of children from poor families and 57 percent from rich families below 5 years are still dying due to poor care-seeking and low use of oral rehydration therapy (ORT) practice in Ethiopia hence many children dying of diarrhea. Ethiopians household practices by mothers’ shows that most of mothers 63 percent breastfeed children up to 4 months old contributing to malnutrition diseases because of lack of enough breastfeeding. Some of these children end up dying. Malaria and pneumonia are the main causes of high child mortality rate while HIV has begun as an upcoming cause of childhood death by 6.2 percent. Under- five years mortality rates are 148.6 and 192.5 in urban and rural areas respectively, which is a relative bigger figure compared to that of other SSA countries. Probability of Dying Between 15-60 Years of Female and Male Ethiopian women have a high probability of losing their life between the age of 15 and 60 years. This has been associated by the heavy workloads that they are subjected to, poor diet and often pregnancies that have an adverse impact on women’s health status. Health indicator report shows that about one out of three women and one out of four mothers of children less than three years old have Body Mass Indices that are less than 18.5. This shows that the level of chronic energy deficiency in adult women in Ethiopia is relatively higher than that of the other SSA countries. Ethiopian women work for about 15-18 hours n a day. Bearing that many of the domestic work in rural area is labor intensive women get old so fast and are also vulnerable to diseases as their immune is lowered by poor diets and hard work that they go through. Therefore, high mortality rate due to their high susceptibility to diseases is experienced in Ethiopia. On the other hand, women mortality rate is at a higher rate compared to that of men. On the other hand, even if Ethiopian constitution emphasizes that men and women have equal rights, the traditional societal structure in Ethiopia keeps women under a vulnerable situation. For example, harmful traditional practices such as female circumcision affect 80 percent of women. This practice is not healthy for women and communicable disease such as HIV/AIDS is highly susceptible to them. Disease, Famine and Malnutrition Communicable disease such as HIV/AIDs and non-communicable diseases such as acute respiratory infection, malaria and diarrhea have been highly been contributed by poor living conditions which has accelerated morbidity rate that have resulted from high environmental infectious pressure. For example, the occurrence of diarrhea is high by 25 percent for the poor families and 19 percent for the rich families in Ethiopia while the occurrence rate of acute respiratory infection (ARI) is 24 percent. Many of the poor people in the rural areas are not able to access health services compared to those in urban areas. Famine has also affected the health conditions of Ethiopians because of the young and fast growing population has put a lot of force on agricultural lands. Due to densely population, where about 23.2 percent of population occupying a land that is 9 percent, there has been continuous environmental degradation and most of the land has been left bare while people live very close to each other such that a communicable disease easily spread among them. As shelter has occupied the bigger part of the land, more than 50 percent of Ethiopians in especially in the rural areas remain under food insecure. Those that can access something to eat, continuously eat one type of diet resulting to malnutrition diseases while child malnutrition is caused by lack of continuous breastfeeding of children up to the required time by their mothers The general health status is that public hospitals charges high prices on health care compared to health posts. This means that poor people do not access better health care offered by the public hospital but rich people affords the heath care from public hospital thus cause imbalance in access of health care. On the other hand, heath care work is dominated by male denying women equal opportunities hence a result of imbalance health services based on gender disparity. Poorest groups have on the other hand been benefiting very little from public spending compared to the rich group. Ethiopia Government Commitments to Improve Health Ethiopia government has currently strengthened its commitment to quicken progress on maternal and child health consequences. Reduction of maternal and child mortality is among the main objectives of the Ethiopia Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) published in the year 2002. The Poverty Reduction Strategy aims at reducing the maternal and child mortality by expanding the provision of important health and nutrition services to the poor rural population. This is to solve persistent problem that has been associated with Ethiopia government recording the lowest per capita spending on upgrading health services. The government has also set national holidays to ensure civil servants including those in hospitals take even if it is a one-day break to relieve them from so much pressure from their committed work. Ethiopian government is also creating balance among health care workers by offering opportunities for the women in the health sectors in order to ensure flexibility and gender equality in the health sector. References Ministry Of Health (2001). Health and Health Related Indicators. Addis Ababa Journal Report. Tadela, T et al, (1996).Ethiopia Social Sector Study Report on Cost Effectiveness and Program Evaluations of Major Health Intervention. Addis Ababa: World Bank. Read More