FAMILY MEDICINE IN ETHIOPIA: OVERCOMING CURRENT CHALLENGES AND SEIZING OPPORTUNITIES FOR FUTURE GROWTH

Ethiopia’s health indicators are among the worst in the world and there is a major physician shortage in the country. Ethiopia currently only has 3 physicians per 100, 000 populations. There is a growing recognition that development of Family Medicine as a specialty could help address Ethiopia’s health care challenges. The first Family Medicine residency program was started in 2013 at the Addis Ababa University in collaboration with the University of Toronto and the University of Wisconsin and graduated its first class of residents in January of 2016. The Ethiopian Ministry of Health is planning to start additional Family Medicine programs in an effort to increase the number of family physicians in the country. Even though family medicine is off to a good start and there is vision at the highest level for rapid expansion, significant challenges remain. The challenges include that family medicine is not well understood by the community, the roles of family medicine is still not well understood, family medicine residents are uncertain about their future career options, there is scarcity of local family physicians and limitation of resources. For successful expansion of family medicine in Ethiopia, we need to develop common vision for family medicine, have continual discussion on potential roles of family medicine in Ethiopia, build local capacity and ownership, have policy framework placing family medicine at the base of the primary health care delivery and develop collaborative relationship with other sub-Saharan African countries.