CDC in Ethiopia

Overview

CDC established an office in Ethiopia in 2001. CDC works closely with the Government of Ethiopia and partner organizations to detect, prevent, and control infectious disease outbreaks, and build and strengthen the country's core public health capabilities. These include data and surveillance, laboratory capacity, workforce and institutions, prevention and response, innovation and research, and policy, communications, and diplomacy. CDC’s work aims to protect the health of our nations and public health around the world.

CDC in Ethiopia also addresses the following public health areas:

• Global health security
• Public health emergency management and outbreak response.
• HIV
• Tuberculosis (TB)
• Malaria
• Vaccine preventable diseases (VPDs), including polio and measles.

Global health security

CDC's global health security efforts in Ethiopia help enhance the country’s ability to prevent, detect, and respond to disease outbreaks.

Public health systems

CDC helps strengthen and expand laboratory testing, epidemiology, disease surveillance, and infection prevention and control.

Laboratory systems strengthening

CDC provides guidance on specimen management and biosafety to deliver diagnostic-specific recommendations. CDC also supports the Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI) to establish a national framework for biosafety and biosecurity.

Workforce development

Through the Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP), CDC strengthens Ethiopia's workforce capacity to identify and stop health threats before they spread. The program consists of three levels of training: frontline, intermediate, and advanced. Participants learn to gather critical data and turn it into evidence-based action. FETP graduates are critical to preparedness and response efforts.

FETP-Advanced has 692 graduates since 2009 and 155 current residents. Specific specialty tracks have been established— including malaria, HIV, and noncommunicable diseases. FETP-Intermediate has 19 graduates and 18 current residents since 2021. FETP-Frontline has a total of 1,144 graduates since 2017 and 80 current residents. Additionally, 156 surveillance officers from police and defense forces also received training.

Surveillance systems

CDC works with the EPHI to implement a national surveillance system (DHIS2) that collects infectious disease data from health facilities.

Public health emergency management

CDC supports the Public Health Emergency Management system, which involves preparing, preventing, detecting, responding, and recovering from public health threats.

Key achievements

• CDC supported training of 1,833 disease detectives in advanced, intermediate, and frontline FETPs since 2009.
• 11 of 13 regions have established EOCs.
• Since 2014, CDC has supported Ethiopia’s EOCs to respond to: COVID-19, Ebola and Marburg preparedness, meningitis, cholera, measles, severe acute malnutrition, dengue fever, chikungunya, scabies, drought-related public health issues, flooding, and internal displacement.
• During the COVID-19 pandemic, CDC worked with the FMOH, EPHI, and other public health partners to ensure broad access to diagnostic services and prevent further spread of disease.

HIV and TB

Through the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, CDC partners with Ethiopia to:

• Provide comprehensive HIV treatment and prevention.
• Intensify TB co-infection, prevention, timely detection, and treatment.
• Help the government's scale-up cervical cancer screening and treatment among women living with HIV.
• Strengthen integration of non-communicable diseases into HIV care, including hypertension, diabetes mellitus and mental health disorders.
• Strengthen laboratory systems.

CDC supports Ethiopia's efforts to reach HIV epidemic control by 2030. CDC accomplishes this through enhanced case-finding, linkage to treatment, and viral load testing. CDC also supports efforts for continued adherence and retention of patients on antiretroviral treatment (ART).

CDC also partners with EPHI to strengthen disease detection, surveillance and response functions. CDC helps to strengthen laboratory personnel capacity, quality assurance systems, specimen referral networks, and improve recovery efforts in conflict zones.

CDC also implements intensified TB case finding and TB preventive therapy to reduce TB-associated deaths for people living with HIV.

Key achievements

• CDC supports ART services for more than 459,800 people living with HIV.
• CDC identified and treated over 7,900 TB cases and provided TB preventive treatment for over 32,700 people living with HIV in 2023.
• In 2023, over 11,600 women who live with HIV received ART to prevent transmission to their child.
• CDC supported over 130 key population-friendly clinics in public health facilities.
  • Over 57,800 female sex workers received comprehensive HIV clinical services.
  • Over 62,000 HIV tests were conducted among female sex workers and their sexual networks. About 2,000 new patients with HIV were identified, of which 86% received ART.
  • CDC Ethiopia provided pre-exposure prophylaxis services for over 12,700 individuals who have substantial risk of HIV infection.
• In 2023, CDC Ethiopia supported HIV testing for over 2.3 million adults and detected over 26,800 new HIV infections.
• In 2023, CDC Ethiopia supported over 27,300 voluntary medical male circumcision procedures.
• CDC Ethiopia supports gender-based violence prevention and care in health facilities.
  • CDC is finalizing the implementation of the national HIV case-based surveillance, violence against children survey.
• In 2023, CDC supported provision of post violence care services to over 11,500 individuals in more than 315 public health facilities.
  • Over 10,000 survivors sought services for sexual violence.
• Over 64,000 women living with HIV received cervical cancer screening service in 2023.

Immunization

CDC's immunization experts partner with Ethiopia to:

• Eradicate polio and eliminate measles.
• Develop an evidence-base for ways to better deliver vaccines.
• Strengthen the national routine immunization program.
• Provide technical support to introduce new vaccines.
• Support outbreak investigation and responsive immunization campaign activities for measles, polio, cholera, COVID-19, and other VPDs.
• Support routine immunization programs in evaluating current practices, introducing new vaccines, and designing approaches to improving access and vaccine coverage.

Key achievements

• CDC piloted the Hepatitis B vaccine, which is given at birth to prevent maternal-to-child transmission, to assess feasibility of use.
• CDC helped establish a surveillance site to monitor for adverse events following COVID-19 immunization.
• CDC supported trials of smaller measles vaccine (5 dose) compared to usual presentation (10 dose) to assess the impact on coverage and wastage.
• CDC helped evaluate barriers to receiving vaccines after the first year of life, systems for following up on children who have missed vaccine doses, and urban immunization programs.
• CDC generated evidence on the cost of VPD surveillance.

Malaria

Through the U.S. President's Malaria Initiative (PMI) CDC assigned a resident advisor to help implement malaria prevention and control activities in Ethiopia. CDC's technical support includes investigation of insecticide resistance and research on durability of long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets. With U.S. support, Ethiopia is close to achieving malaria elimination in more than 230 districts.

Key achievements

• PMI distributed more than 50 million mosquito nets since 2008.
• PMI delivered over 9 million rapid diagnostic tests and nearly 16 million fast acting malaria medicines.

Fact sheet

Ethiopia Fact Sheet

Download the U.S. CDC's country fact sheet for Ethiopia.

Nov. 8, 2024

Download

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