2.2.2 Health Policy

The national Health Policy deals with overall health aspects of the Ethiopian citizen and how health services should be provided to them. The current policy on health in Ethiopia dates from 1993 and is titled Health Policy of the Transitional Government (TGE, 1993). (‘Transitional Government’ refers to the first few years of the current system of government in Ethiopia, from 1991 to 1995.)

The Health Policy was the result of a critical examination of the prevailing and newly emerging health problems of the country. It acknowledged that, based on conventional measures such as morbidity (sickness) and mortality (death) from communicable diseases, infant and maternal mortality, malnutrition and average life expectancy, Ethiopia was among the least-privileged nations in the world. To address the problems a strategic approach was needed that did not consider health in isolation, but recognised and integrated the links with other policies on population dynamics, food availability, acceptable living conditions and other requirements essential for health improvement. This included water supply and sanitation.