The Guardian newspaper has recognised what we have known for many years, that the Director of Hospice Ethiopia, Ephrem Abathun, is one of the truly inspirational people alive in the world today! He richly deserves this recognition for his amazing dedication to his work. Read all about him and his work here.
Following the successful visit to Hospice Ethiopia in October by 3 of our trustees, we are enormously grateful to Alan Miller for putting together a short film about Hospice Ethiopia from material gathered by our trustees.
We’re pleased to announce that Hospice Ethiopia appears in the latest issue of the prestigious New Scientist journal – issue 3379. The article unfortunately can’t be viewed online but subscribers will be able to view it in their print copy on page 29. We hope that this will spread the word about HEUK to a wide range of people both here in the UK and overseas. The article was included under the “advertise your charity” initiative.
Hospice Ethiopia UK is delighted with the amazing support that they received during the donation
week in December. The success of the week means that the project to develop a range of
standardised palliative care courses approved by the Federal Ministry of Health can start early in 2021.
Read more about The Big Give Christmas challenge in ehospice news.
The latest reports from Northern Ethiopia are extremely concerning – over the past few weeks, tensions in the region of Tigray have escalated and there have been reports of violent clashes between the Ethiopian army and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.
Throughout the crisis, we’ve been able to maintain our regular communications with the Director at Hospice Ethiopia, Ephrem Abathun.
Hospice Ethiopia does not operate any care programmes in the northern Tigray region, and Ephrem reports that local work by the hospice in Addis Ababa is not directly impacted by the fighting in the north.
The situation is serious, but the government is striving to handle the operation with as much care as possible to avoid damage and effects to the Tigray people.
Ephrem Abathun, Executive Director of Hospice Ethiopia
With phone and internet restrictions in Tigray it is difficult to get updates directly from the affected areas, however, our partner, Ethiopiaid, describes how casualties are being treated in the Afar region, to the east of Tigray. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reports that medical supplies are running out in hospitals in Mekelle.
Hospice Ethiopia continues to run its programmes in Addis Ababa, as far as ongoing virus restrictions allow, and we hope that hostilities will end quickly.
All of the people of Ethiopia are in our thoughts,
Sue Mumford
Chair, Hospice Ethiopia UK
Happy Christmas and many thanks to all of our supporters from the team at Hospice Ethiopia UK.
With good wishes for 2018,
Sue Mumford
Chair, Hospice Ethiopia UK
Photo: Leaf from Gunda Gunde Gospels. The Christmas Story: Picturing the Birth of Christ in Medieval Manuscripts. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. 2009-2010.
Blog as originally featured in the BMJ Opinion, 27 May 2016. http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2016/05/27/jamie-and-sue-mumford-palliative-care-in-ethiopia/
We have recently returned from our fourth visit to Addis Ababa. With less than 1% of the estimated 150,000 new cancer cases annually in Ethiopia receiving specialist oncological treatment [1], the need for affordable palliative care in the country is huge.
Hospice Ethiopia, the only palliative care unit in the country providing symptom control treatment, was set up in 2003 by Sister Tsigerada Yiswafossen. It is a non-governmental organisation and as such has to raise 90% of its funds from outside the country. When funding is dependent on donors there is a continuous need of international and domestic networking.
The objectives of Hospice Ethiopia are quality of life for their patients, training of health professionals, and raising awareness of palliative care needs and treatment. The four nurses and one part-time doctor at Hospice Ethiopia provide community based palliative care free of charge to terminally ill people in three districts (estimated population of 900,000) in the east/north of the city.
Access to opiates is finally improving. Since we first visited four years ago, the number of hospitals in Addis Ababa that have access to oral morphine has increased from one to nine. With training from Hospice Ethiopia staff, support from the Ethiopian government, and funding from the US, 700 healthcare professionals are now able to appropriately use strong opioids. It has been a privilege to see and be a small part of this process, (which puts our NHS work as a GP and Community Specialist Palliative Care Nurse into perspective). Hospice Ethiopia staff have also helped to produce national palliative care guidelines, published by the Ethiopian Ministry of Health.
A recent exciting development is a project supported by the WHPCA to enable Hospice Ethiopia to work with the traditional burial societies known as Iddirs to promote palliative care delivery to Ethiopia’s rural population. Iddirs were originally set up to help with the costs of burials but are now used for a wide range of community issues.
We are part of a small group based at Priscilla Bacon Lodge Specialist Palliative Care Unit in Norwich who support Hospice Ethiopia. We have close links with a similar group led by Dr Norrtsrom in Sweden and with Professor Anne Merriman at Hospice Africa Uganda. We endeavour to promote much needed palliative care in this fast changing part of Africa. We will be back in the new year!
References:
1 Woldeamanuel YW, Girma B, Teklu AM. Cancer in Ethiopia. Lancet Oncol 2013;14:289–90. doi:10.1016/S1470-2045(12)70399-6.
Jamie Mumford is a GP in north Norfolk and Sue Mumford is a community palliative care nurse.
Photo: patient consent obtained.
A twinning arrangement between palliative care specialists in Norfolk and hospices in Ethiopia is starting to make “progress” in the Africa country, according to a nurse involved with the scheme.
Article in the Nursing Times, https://www.nursingtimes.net/clinical-archive/end-of-life-and-palliative-care/norfolk-nurse-sees-slow-progress-in-ethiopian-palliative-care/5082876.article
Hospice Ethiopia UK 
