ADDIS ABABA, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified its priorities for Ethiopia during 2024 and 2025 amid "ever-increasing needs and decreased funding."
The WHO, in its Ethiopia Health Cluster Strategy for 2024-2025 published late Thursday, said the East African country has been repeatedly affected by conflict, flooding, drought and disease outbreaks in the past years.
According to the WHO, the El Nino phenomenon is expected to cause further havoc up to July 2024, by causing drought in some parts of the country and flooding in others. It said food insecurity due to lost harvest and livestock is aggravating already high malnutrition rates, negatively impacting morbidity and mortality.
The WHO said in an environment with "ever-increasing needs and decreased funding," it has identified priorities for 2024 and 2025, which include strengthening advocacy for longer-term development funding to address root causes of recurrent disease outbreaks, while also advocating for increased access to quality health services.
As part of its priority of advocating for increased access to quality health services, the WHO said it will focus on sexual and reproductive health services, the inclusion of people with disabilities, older people, and people living with HIV, as well as addressing remote populations through the inclusion of mobile health teams.
The WHO said it is closely collaborating with the Ethiopian Ministry of Health to prepare for, prevent, and respond to public health emergencies by mobilizing resources to enable health partners to provide life-saving health services to vulnerable populations.
According to the WHO, as of January 2024, the country is actively responding to the longest recorded cholera outbreak, which started in August 2022, recurrent measles outbreaks, which started in August 2021, and the highest number of malaria cases reported since 2017.
