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U.S. Government Inaugurates the First Pediatric Emergency Care Unit in Ethiopia

Comprehensive General Laboratory also Inaugurated

January 25, 2012, Addis Ababa – U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia Donald E. Booth and Ethiopian Minister of Health, Dr. Teodros Adhanom today inaugurated the first Pediatric Emergency Care Unit in Ethiopia and a Comprehensive General Laboratory at Tikur Anbessa (Black Lion) Hospital. The new pediatric unit and laboratory will offer critical, specialized care to children and increase the quality and access to laboratory services for all patients.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), through funding from the U.S. President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), committed 170,000 USD (2.8 million birr) to the renovation of the emergency unit and laboratory which was implemented by Johns Hopkins University. The result is a renovated, state of the art Pediatric Emergency Care Unit and Comprehensive General Laboratory. The Pediatric Unit contains a 50 bed emergency room with critical and medical care, trauma, transfusion and procedure bays, and isolation rooms – providing pediatric patients, families, staff, and doctors in training with a conducive learning and work environment. The Laboratory has now brought together the six fragmented laboratories that were operating in the Tikur Anbessa Hospital into one comprehensive space – forming an all inclusive laboratory that includes a new microbiology section – increasing quality and availability of laboratory results to its patients.

The CDC Ethiopia program supports the Government of Ethiopia’s health system strengthening initiative and meeting the Millennium Development Goals of reducing morbidity and mortality related to HIV/AIDS and conditions affecting maternal child health. .

Tikur Anbessa Hospital is a tertiary academic center that provides multidisciplinary services and serves as the major medical teaching institution in Ethiopia. The hospital is Ethiopia’s largest referral hospital, serving the entire 82 million plus population. It receives and manages the largest pool of patients and most complicated trauma cases and many critically ill patients with HIV/AIDS seek urgent care there. It accommodates more than 250,000 patients per year including an annual emergency room flow of over 24,000 patients and four thousand newborn deliveries.