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| Ambassador's Speech>2011 >110803 | |||||
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| at the Signing Ceremony for a Grant Contract for Providing Medical Beds to the Felege Hiwot Referral Hospital in Bahir Dar on 3 August, 2011 |
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| Ato Andar GieAtenaf, CEO of the Felege Hiwot Referral Hospital, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, Endemen Walachehu. It is a most pleasant duty for me to sign the first grant contract for a grassroots human security project in the JFY 2011. The project awarded this time is a health project for providing medical beds to a core hospital in Bahir Dar to improve its medical treatment conditions. Our project partner is the Felege Hiwot Referral Hospital, one of the four regional hospitals in the Amhara Region. The total funding to be extended is about USD 113,000. In Ethiopia, very few medical institutions are modern and well-equipped. The Felege Hiwot Referral Hospital, the largest hospital in the region, is no exception. Its medical facilities are in disrepair and need urgent improvement. In particular, medical beds are in short supply, and every day about 30 patients have to lie on mattresses on the floor, stretchers or even just fabric as substitutes for proper hospital beds. Overall, there are six inpatient wards in this hospital with 350 beds in total. 30 of them, however, are not usable due to severe deterioration. Another 90 beds are in use but are in very poor condition. This is the primary reason why the Embassy of Japan decided to recommend this project to Tokyo for approval. With this project, 120 refurbished Japanese hospital beds will be provided to the inpatient wards of this hospital. As a result, the hospital’s capacity to receive and treat inpatients will be substantially improved. At this point, I would like to mention that an important health project is now being implemented in the Amhara Region by JICA in collaboration with the Amhara Regional Health Bureau, namely the “Amhara Regional Infectious Disease Surveillance (AmRids).” This project aims to strengthen the disease surveillance scheme in the region. It also aims to establish a referral system, in which patients are referred from local health units to one of the referral hospitals for major operations and intensive care. Through this project, a health database will be built to support better and more effective health services. This small-scale, grassroots project for which we have just signed a grant contract is linked with and will contribute to the larger, multi-year technical cooperation program of JICA, namely the AmRids. Ladies and Gentlemen, It is gratifying that these two health projects are synchronized and will proceed hand in hand in Bahir Dar in the coming year. Through these projects, health conditions for 200,000 citizens of Bahir Dar and its vicinity are expected to improve, including the reduction of unnecessary deaths from various diseases. In this connection, I would like to remind our project partner that the project should be implemented on schedule, with my GGP staff in charge well informed of the progress. It is also important that the benefits of the project should be enjoyed by people in the local community. One of the characteristics of grassroots human security projects is that they are directly beneficial to residents. Since 1997, the Embassy of Japan in Ethiopia has supported about 290 Grassroots Human Security Projects in various parts of Ethiopia, in education, water supply, agriculture, health and other areas of basic human needs. We will continue to support a variety of projects at the grassroots level for the benefit of marginalized and vulnerable people in Ethiopia. For this fiscal year, we plan to support 18 such projects. Amesegenalehu. |
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