With funding from the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), Crown Agents USA was awarded a contract to implement the US Agency for International Development/Ethiopia's Health Centre Renovation Project in September 2006. This project improved the infrastructure of public health facilities throughout Ethiopia's most populous regions to enhance the quality of critical health care services.
The two and a half year project provided the following results:
- A coordination and planning focal point for national and bilateral stakeholders on health centre renovation.
- Technical assistance on health centre renovation to the Federal Ministry of Health Regional Health Bureaus, including technical design, engineering, procurement, and logistics support in the five most populous regions (Amhara, Oromia, Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples State, and Tigray) and the capital city, Addis Ababa.
- Direct renovation support to selected health centres.
- Fourteen short-term technical assistance consultants to be seconded to the Federal Ministry of Health
For the first two years of the project, our team exceeded renovation and technical assistance targets; one US Government official was quoted saying that the project has "broken new ground" and had "provided a model for standardising and streamlining health centre renovation."
By December 2008 we had:
- built local capacity through 243 technical assistance activities
- mentored health centre staff at 100 facilities
- renovated 47 health centres.
Moreover, many health centres lacked basic functions such as access to safe water and sanitation as well as adequate treatment space. Improving these working conditions has allowed medical staff to provide significantly improved health care services. The project has addressed deficiencies in infrastructure and sanitation by completing these critical activities:
- 100% health centres with a water system and/or waste water disposal system renovated
- 75% health centres with sanitation system (latrines, toilets, sewage lines and septic tanks, and pit latrines) renovated
- 88% health centres with HIV/AIDS and chronic care areas were renovated
- 88% health centres with antenatal/preventing mother to child transmission, labour and delivery and postnatal care areas renovated
- 93% health centres with piped/well water tested for bacteria (coliforms) and lead.