LALIBELA, Ethiopia \u2014 You know the images you have in your mind of Ethiopia from 27 years ago? The ones from the nightly news reports on TV about the famine in the Horn of Africa <\/a>as the death toll and horror stories grew.<\/p>\n Scorched, cracked earth. The carcasses of emaciated, dead cattle lying in the baking sun. Hundreds of thousands of stick-thin refugees wandering in the dust, hoping to have enough strength to make it to a camp that might have water and food. The babies and children with orange hair and distended stomachs \u2014 indications that they were in the advanced stages of malnutrition and starvation.<\/p>\n I am happy to report that the Ethiopia of 2012 is not the Ethiopia of 1985.<\/p>\n Thanks to global efforts (Live Aid, etc., back in the day), foreign aid, and the very real efforts of the Ethiopian government and people themselves, the land I saw earlier this month looks nothing like those old images in my mind. In fact, parts of the country that we traveled through were so verdant and lush \u2014 farmlands rolling out in various shades of green like a St. Patrick\u2019s Day quilt\u00a0 \u2014 that if you\u2019d blindfolded me when I got on the plane and taken the blind of when I stepped of the bus in the rural area outside Bahir Dar near the Sudanese border, I might have thought I was in Ireland\u2019s County Kerry rather than Ethiopia\u2019s Amhara Region.<\/p>\n Ethiopia is beautiful. In every way. Its people. Its resilience. Its ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit. In the way it cares for its land and its people, and the way they care for each other and their visitors. There is a spirit in Ethiopia I\u2019ve experienced elsewhere only rarely.<\/p>\n In a word I\u2019d call it HOPE. But it\u2019s a hope not based on daydreams and fairytales. It\u2019s a hope based in hard work, smart planning, and forward thinking.<\/p>\n The ONE MOMS\/ONE MUMS <\/a>group I traveled with to Ethiopia this month spent a few days out in the northwest of Ethiopia, visiting hospitals, clinics, agricultural collectives, demonstration farms, and a remarkable group of women bee keepers (but I\u2019ll save that for a future post.)<\/p>\n What those few days in the Amhara region put regal faces, calloused hands, quick minds, strong backs, and busy feet to the statistics we hear so often about foreign aid to the developing world \u2014 Africa in particular \u2014 and what financial resources from the U.S., U.K., and the rest of the G8 (and their posses) can and cannot do on the ground half a world away.<\/p>\n Let me tell you what I saw: A lot. Epic change. Hope for the future. Plans to avert disasters \u2014 \u201cnatural\u201d or human-made.<\/p>\n In 1992, the proportion of the Ethiopian population that was undernourished was 69 percent. Today, the percentage of undernourished Ethiopians is 41 percent. That\u2019s still a lot of hungry people, but it\u2019s a dramatic decline in 20 years. Infant mortality in Ethiopia is one of the highest in the world (68 per 1,000 live births) \u2014 but that rate dropped 39 percent between 1990 (when the rate was 111 deaths per 1,000 live births) and 2010, according to UNICEF<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ethiopia also has reduced the under-five mortality rate by 47 percent between 1990 and 2010.<\/p>\n \u201cThese achievements are largely a result of Ethiopia\u2019s investment in a community health system and a cadre of 35,000 health workers who provide front-line care,\u201d Dr. Rajiv Shah, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)<\/a>, wrote in the May\/June issue of Frontlines<\/em><\/a> magazine. In a nation where only 10 percent of births occur in health facilities, community health workers \u2014 skilled in birth attendance and equipped with affordable tools to save the lives of mothers and newborns \u2014 serve a critical role.<\/p>\n \u201cBut despite this significant progress, one in 11 children in Ethiopia do not live beyond their fifth birthday,\u201d Shah wrote. \u201cDevelopment is full of problems we have few ways to solve. Helping children reach their fifth birthday is not one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n Here are a few statistics (because I know some of you have an easier time getting your heads around numbers than stories) that speak to the challenges Ethiopia (and elsewhere in the developing world) still face:<\/p>\n OK. So that\u2019s the bad news.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s good news, too, and lots of it, from what I witnessed in person across Ethiopia.<\/p>\n There is a new program, run by the Ethiopian government and funded by USAID, called the Integrated Family Health Program (IFHP). It\u2019s a five-year program (begun in 2008) that ultimately is expected to reach half of the Ethiopian population with training and services to improve health practices both in individual households and in communities at large. One of the program\u2019s big pushes is to get young children fully immunized. So, for instance, when a mother or parents come into a health center or outpost to discuss family planning \u2014 Ethiopia is encouraging the use of long-term contraception such as Depo Provera<\/a> injections or sub-cutaneous contraceptive implants \u2014 their child or children can be immunized at the same time.<\/p>\n The USAID\u2019s IFHP works side-by-side with an innovative program of the Ethiopian government itself called the Health Extension Program<\/a>. The Ethiopian government had trained and salaried more than 35,000 health care providers \u2014 the vast majority of them women \u2014 and dispatched them to 286 districts in the country serving approximately 32 million people. Most of the people served by Health Extension workers live in rural areas where hospitals and clinics are few and far between. They go out to the villages and make old-fashioned house calls, providing services from prenatal exams and post-natal follow-ups to immunizations and basic health care needs.<\/p>\n I had the privilege of meeting some of the Health Extension workers and they are an extraordinary bunch. Young, ambitious, and seemingly tireless. Their work has been credited with the 28 percent decrease in under-5 child deaths, literally saving the lives of 560,000 children since 2005. Amazing.<\/p>\n Listen to one of my traveling companions, the marvelous British ONE Mums blogger Michelle Pannell<\/a> (aka @michelletwinmum<\/a>) talk about our visit to the health centers below as you view the slide show of my photos from that amazing day in rural, northwest Ethiopia.<\/p>\n\n
MADERA WOREDA HEALTH OFFICE AND NBESAME HEALTH CENTER<\/strong><\/h4>\n