Medical care in Ethiopia.

Ethiopia is one of the largest of the developing countries in Africa and it has features in public health which are common to all the underdeveloped countries--prevalence of communicable diseases and malnutrition, limited economic resources, numerous peasant agricultural communities, a large child population and shortages of trained staff and medical facilities. It is the purpose of this paper to trace the development of the health services in Ethiopia against this background and to outline the medical resources and methods of delivery of medical care which are evolving there. Although western medicine had been introduced into parts of Ethiopia by missionaries during the latter part of the last century, Swedish doctors and nurses having reached the Eritrean coast in 1866 (Ozanic, 1961) and although some of the hospitals in the existing health services date from the early 1900's onwards, all the major steps in establishing organised medical care have taken place within the three post-occupation decades from 1941-50, 1951-60 and 1961-70.