Ethiopia

Determinants of Health

Determinants of health can be defined as, “the range of personal, social, economic, and environmental, factors which determine the health status of individuals or populations,” (Skolnik, 2020c). Ethiopia has its fair share of challenges regarding the health of its population. The challenges that will be mentioned here are nutrition, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, education, diarrhea among children under five, and clean water.

Education seems to be a very challenging situation in Ethiopia. A study was conducted by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2010, among school aged children and revealed that one-third of children in second grade could not read (United States Agency for International Development, 2020b).  The USAID has partnered with Ministry of Education and others to try and combat this issue (United States Agency for International Development, 2020b). Another shocking statistic regarding education is that 47.1 % of women in the Ethiopian population have never received any education (World Health Organization, 2002-2015a).

Ethiopia’s economy is primarily driven by agriculture (United States Agency for International Development, 2020a). If there are any issues with natural disasters which the country is known to have as mentioned previously then this can cause a food shortage. Malnutrition is a major issue in Ethiopia with approximately 38% of children suffering from it (United States Agency for International Development, 2020d). Anemia is a huge problem in children under the age of five, in 2016 alone 50 % of the population in this category suffered from it (World Health Organization, 2005-2017). The USAID’s program Feed the Future in Ethiopia is working to help the economy grow with regards to agriculture in hopes that it will help the country as a whole and allow for more self-sufficiency, and improved nutrition for all (United States Agency for International Development, 2020a). Ethiopia has also partnered with USAID and created the Government of Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP), to help communities facing food shortages by supplying staples that are needed for households (United States Agency for International Development, 2020a).

In Ethiopia some of the major communicable diseases that are prevalent are HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis (TB) (World Health Organization, 2002-2015a). Both of these diseases are highly contagious and have serious consequences to the person(s) infected. Approximately 1.1% of adults aged 15-49, in Ethiopia have HIV (World Health Organization, 2002-2015a). In 2015, the number of TB cases were 192 per 100,000 (World Health Organization, 2002-2015a). Another, deadly disease in Ethiopia was Malaria, with an astonishing 1,867,059 cases reported in 2015, and of those reported cases, another astonishing 662 deaths reported from Malaria (World Health Organization, 2002-2015a). The leading cause of death in Ethiopia according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2019), is neonatal disorders.  Some of the other leading causes of death according to the CDC are diarrheal diseases, TB, HIV/AIDS, meningitis, stroke, lower respiratory infections, protein energy malnutrition, ischemic heart disease, and cirrhosis (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2019).

For noncommunicable diseases a major player is diarrheal diseases (United States Agency for International Development, 2020e). Diarrheal diseases typically are attained via unclean or unsafe drinking water, and these diseases are the leading causes of death in children under five years of age in Ethiopia (United States Agency for International Development, 2020e). The United States Agency for International Development(2020e) reported that only 57.3 % of the population in Ethiopia was using improved drinking water sources in 2016, and that only 28% of the population used improved sanitation facilities.

A video on the left of the screen displays a video of Aysha, she travels eight hours per day in Ethiopia to gather water for herself and her family (Farley, 2018). She goes alone, only bringing a camel and what appears to be old gasoline jugs to collect the water in. According to the YouTube video, Aysha's struggles to get water, it was noted that less than 5 liters of water was used daily (UNICEF Ethiopia, 2016). All that travel for water that is visibly dirty and for so little.

There are programs in place to try and help with these issues. The Government of Ethiopia has agreed to provide free national treatment to individuals affected by HIV/AIDS, and this has shown much success (United States Agency for International Development, 2020c). Within just one year of this program the number of individuals who were receiving services related to HIV/AIDS went from 500,000 to over nine million, and nearly 394,000 individuals affected are now on antiretrovirals compared to only about 900 individuals in 2005 (United States Agency for International Development, 2020c). A program entitled the Health Extension Program is in place to help individual affected with TB, and this program is a part of the Sustainable Development Goals, with a goal to end TB by 2030 (World Health Organization, 2016). The USAID has partnered with the Government of Ethiopia to help better the fight against HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria, lack of contraceptive options, mother and child health, issues within health systems, and malnutrition (United States Agency for International Development, 2020c). The way that USAID and the Government of Ethiopia are fighting these issues are by training medical professionals and opening up more medical centers, already 38,000 health care extension workers have been trained and 2,500 medical centers have been opened (United States Agency for International Development, 2020c).