ETHIOPIA: Over 50 percent of children stunted - gov't report

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

ADDIS ABABA, 18 Mar 2005 (IRIN) - More than half of all Ethiopian children are stunted, according to a government report on the state of the country’s health released on Thursday.

One in 10 children were described as "wasted", and just under half as underweight due to poor diet and malnutrition, in the report issued by Ethiopia’s health ministry.

The figures also revealed that Ethiopian babies were more likely to die before they reached the age of five than in any other country in the world.

Entitled ‘Health and Health-Related Indicators’, the 60-page report detailed the massive gap faced by Ethiopia in meeting global health and poverty targets for 2015.

Vivian Vansteirteghem, head of health and nutrition at the UN’s Children Fund (UNICEF), told IRIN on Thursday that the UN and the Ethiopian government had launched a massive drive to tackle child health.

She said a government-led health programme, involving the training of 28,000 health workers over the next five years, was under way. The ministry, she said, had developed a national strategy for child survival. It included the promotion of breast-feeding, the prevention of illness through immunisation programmes and the treatment of pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria.

"These areas tackle the three main areas of child mortality," she added.

According to the government’s report, malaria was the biggest killer in the country.

Under a health scheme to help children in rural areas, UNICEF, the health ministry and the World Food Programme have been trying to reach 6.8 million children. The Enhanced Outreach Strategy offers measles vaccinations, vitamin A, de-worming and nutritional screening across most of the country.

Ethiopia’s government has said it needs around US $13 billion over the next decade if it is to have any chance of meeting the world health targets set by the United Nations.

Its health ministry, which has an annual budget of $135 million, says that there are just 126 hospitals with 2,000 doctors in the country of 71 million people.

"The public health-care system is underdeveloped, and only able to provide basic services to about 64 percent of the population," says the ministry’s report.

"Much of the rural population has little access to modern health care - that lead[s] to the inability of the health-care delivery systems to respond both quantitatively and qualitatively to the health needs of the people."

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