Integrating health sector development program with other rural infrastructures and technology is paramount for health security, so disclosed by Ethiopian 2050 think tank group.
According to the UN COMTRADE database on international trade, Ethiopia’s import of pharmaceutical products was 545.76 million USD in 2017, which represents 5.4 percent of its total imports. There is some sort of progress in expanding universal coverage of primary healthcare in the country over the past few decades, particularly through the Health Extension Program.
The fact that primary hospitals, health centers, and health posts are staffed by Health Extension Workers is commendable. However, challenges remain in poor integration with other community infrastructures, participations, and follow-ups of the health sector. With further investment targeting agglomeration in the rural areas, such as cluster farming, co-locating health services with these emerging institutions and infrastructures offers a convenient, economical, and sustainable option for introducing improvements, particularly technology-supported ones.
Tele-medicine, mobile-phone-based health services, and telephone hotlines for medical advice such as the 8028 hotline for farmers, could be efficiently offered at these locations. Since the underlying technology for offering phone hotlines and mobile solutions for both farming and health information is often similar, hosting the infrastructure in a shared environment will avoid redundancy and waste of resources.
Technology training of health extension workers could be done together with agricultural extension workers, again emphasizing the positive impact cluster environments have on the WFHE nexus. Regarding capacity for pharmaceutical manufacturing, recent data shows that Ethiopia spends more than 0.5 billion USD in pharmaceutical imports which constitute about 5 percent of its imports. With increase in population, this amount is projected to grow significantly. While developing pharmaceutical industry from scratch is a long-term process, Ethiopia already has some experience in this regard.
Ethiopian Pharmaceuticals Manufacturing Sh. Co. (EPHARM), for example, was established in the 1960s. Growing this industry has already been identified as a priority area by the government and this should allow for wide-availability of pharmaceutical drugs for both the urban and rural population. Concerning development of infrastructure for medical center clusters and medical tourism in the long-term, Ethiopia should start thinking of benefitting from the medical tourism industry that has become quite popular around the world.
For example, Gondar with its world-class tourist attractions, mild weather, and a well-respected medical college including, Gondar College of Medical Sciences that was founded in 1954, has the potential to become a medical tourism center. This will not only serve patients from Ethiopia itself but could also be marketed for other countries in general and the neighboring countries of the Sudan, South Sudan, and Somalia, in particular. Competition for medical tourism business is growing around the world.
However, Ethiopia’s potential as a tourist destination, mild weather, and the extended global reach of Ethiopian Airlines could offer compelling advantages, if the right infrastructure is built.
Not only in health sector but also in energy sector, technological tools should be considered. In terms of energy security, integrating grid-scale energy storage with solar, wind, and geothermal generated Power renewables are already recognized as huge potential in here.
In fact, renewables form almost all the power generated in the country. Further, Government of Ethiopia stated ambition is to make Ethiopia a net energy exporter. However, given the intermittent nature of renewable energy sources, particularly wind and solar energy, wind power could go from maximum capacity to zero in a few hours.
Grid-scale battery storage during off-peak hours is essential to bridge these periods and establish wind and solar as reliable sources of energy. Frequent blackouts that are common in the country, for a variety of reasons, could also be effectively addressed by the adoption of energy storage systems. Further, the seasonal variation in available water for the country’s major hydroelectric power plants causes high variability in the amount of energy generated. Therefore, the time has come for Ethiopia to seriously consider a national grid-scale energy storage strategy for grid balancing through utilization of technological element.
In fact, the think tank group submit that without a significant energy storage capability in the country, the planned worth of solar and wind power generation would be impossible to achieve. Currently, there are two utility-scale storage technologies that can be considered for the acceleration services of power generation.
BY MEHARI BEYENE
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD OCTOBER 22/2021
