The most common greeting in Ethiopia is tenasystillin, which means “may god grant you health”. Ethiopians die at a young age. One fifth of all children die before their 5th birthday, and average life expectancy is 46 which is 30 years less than advanced countries.
Clinics are held once a month, trying to educate mothers. These are held under the shade of trees. Here children are weighed in a washing bowl hanging from a tree. Every child attending the clinic is given a health card. It records date of birth (if known), vaccinations and weight.
It is common for children's weight never to be charted as “normal”. Most growth charts are marked as a horizontal line rather than raising. Ethiopia's countryside is still struggling with diseases that are nearly extinct in other countries like tuberculosis, polio and leprosy. The worst killer is diarrhea.
Health workers have a constant line of patients. The most common diseases are malnutrition, malaria, tuberculosis and infections of the chest and eyes.
These preventable diseases combined with infections and malnutrition, kill half a million children under the age of 5 each year. This is only slightly less than the number of people who died in the famine of 1984-85. An example of how bad this is, in the UK, with a similar population, the death rate for people under 5 is 7000 each year.
Because of the lack of education and resources HIV infection and aids is becoming problem. Although in 1986 only 15, 565 causes of full blown aids had been recorded, it has been on a constant rise due patients who were infected before but are only now being detected. Addis Ababa is by far the worst affected place, but the disease is now spreading into the remote parts of the countryside. Transmission by heterosexual intercourse is the most common way of infection, but some traditional practices are also the cause for the current increase. Circumcision, tattooing and decorative scarification are all done regularly, without sterilized equipment.
Health problems in Ethiopia are caused by lack of hygiene, inadequate water, poor sanitation, lack of nutrition and poor medical resources. Only 19% of the total population has access to potable water and less than 12% of the population use latrines.
Health care for both women and children has fallen over the last decade. This is because of decreased access to health services, famine, malnutrition, the continuation of war, environmental sanitation and unsafe water supplies.
Ethiopia's health services are mainly restricted to the population living within a 10km of Addis Ababa, which leaves the majority of the population without proper medical services.
