Photo Credit: FHI 360/ Rachel Deussom

In 2016 the Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI) and the Ethiopian Ministry of Health conducted a census of 3,804 health facilities that provide childbirth services. The survey, known as the 2016 Emergency Obstetric and Newborn (EmONC) Assessment, provides a wide range of information related to the availability and quality of routine and emergency maternal and newborn health services. This is the largest ever EmONC assessment, and Ethiopia is one of few countries to conduct more than one EmONC assessment; the first was conducted in 2008.

Next month (September 2017) the 450-page final report will be launched after careful review by the assessment’s Technical Working Group, experts at the Ministry of Health, and partners. The report will feature comparisons between 2008 and 2016 and provide evidence that investments in infrastructure and human resources for health have increased access, coverage, and quality of care for women and newborns in Ethiopia.  The in-depth report will include detailed information on facility infrastructure; training and availability of human resources who provide maternal and newborn services; results of interviews with providers to measure knowledge and to gather insights into their work environment; and availability of essential medicines, equipment and supplies. The report also features detailed information on facility provision of emergency obstetric signal functions, a proposed set of emergency newborn signal functions, and routine delivery signal functions that should be part of the intrapartum care that every woman receives. In addition to the structural elements of quality of care, the report describes the current state of clinical management through results of reviews of partographs, caesarean deliveries, maternal deaths, and cases of maternal and newborn complications including postpartum hemorrhage, pre-eclampsia and eclampsia, sepsis, newborns with breathing difficulties, small or preterm newborns, and young infants with infections. The report also presents a series of maps to highlight geospatial distributions and disparities of key results.

FHI 360, as a partner with the Averting Maternal Death & Disability (AMDD) program at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, collaborated with EPHI and the TWG throughout the survey process to bring this report to the hands of health planners in the Health Sector Transformation Plan of 2015-2020.