Ministry of Health (MoH) of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia

It is the Ministry of Health’s mission to provide integrated, quick and satisfactory health service with efficient management, controlling mechanism and support.

The most significant MoH policy influencing Health Service Extension Program (HSDP) design and implementation is the policy on decentralisation. This is well articulated within the constitution and in a number of major and supplementary proclamations, and provides the administrative context in which health sector activities take place.

Important steps have been taken in the decentralisation of the health care system. Decision-making processes in the development and implementation of the health system are shared between the Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH), the Regional Health Bureaus (RHBs) and the Woreda Health Offices.

As a result of recent policy measures taken by the Government, the FMOH and the RHBs are made to function more on policy matters and technical support, while the woreda health offices have been made to play the pivotal roles of managing and coordinating the operation of the primary health care services at the woreda levels.

The health sector has recently introduced an innovative health service delivery system through the implementation of the Health Service Extension Program (HSEP). Accelerated Expansion of Primary Health Services strategy has also been endorsed as part of facilitating the implementation of the HSEP.

The MoH hopes to establish an effective and efficient health system that will serve the Ethiopian people and enhance their health and happiness in the near future. HSDP aims to develop a health system, which provides comprehensive and integrated primary care services, primarily based at community level health facilities. It focuses on communicable and non-communicable disease prevention and control, common nutritional disorders, environmental health and hygiene, reproductive health care, maternal and child health, immunisation and the treatment and control of basic infectious diseases like upper respiratory tract infections. It also focuses on health care administrative issues such as establishing quality health care, human resource management and financial resource mobilisation.

Read more: www.moh.gov.et