Improving Primary Health Care Services Delivery

(2022-2027)
A young mother with her child in Jinka, South Ethiopia, Amref intervention site

As part of its commitment to ensuring Universal Health Coverage (UHC), Ethiopia aspires to provide the full spectrum of essential, quality health services through strengthening the primary health care system. The structure and composition of the PHC system has evolved over time and currently consists of primary hospitals, health centers, and health posts comprising the Primary Health Care Unit (PHCU). The Health Extension Program (HEP) is a foundational component of the PHC and an entry point to the health system. To optimize the HEP, the MOH commissioned a multi-stakeholder process resulting in an HEP roadmap that lays out a high-level, long-term vision for how the HEP and the broader health system should be organized, governed, financed, and monitored over three five-year segments.

Amref Health Africa’s Improving Primary Health Care Service Delivery (IPHCSD) is implemented to build on current and upcoming contributions and commitments and the HEP roadmap implementation as an entry point to inform broader PHC service delivery redesign. The project designs a broader PHC model to pressure test the operationalization of PHC service delivery packages and modalities through the Networks of Care (NOC) approach in different contexts.

IPHC Amref project

Outcomes 

The project intends to achieve the following at the primary health care level:

  • Ensure equitable access to and use of essential health services
  • Improve the quality of essential health services
  • Strengthen technical oversight and accountability

Our Footprints

We work in eight regions that represent agrarian, pastoralist, and agro-pastoral contexts of Ethiopia. Amref Health Africa operates in pastoralist and agro-pastoralist areas while JSI operates in agrarian areas. 

         

          Afar

          Amhara

          Gambella

          Oromia

          Sidama

          Southern Nations, Nationalities and People

          Southwest Ethiopia People

Approaches

IPHCSD Project Amref Ethiopia
Download Project Brief
Mobile outreach health service supported by Amref in Afar region, Ethiopia

Major Activities

Ensure equitable access to and utilization of essential health services

  • Pressure-test the Redefined Health Extension Program service packages
  • Implement a community health program in health centers and primary hospitals
  • Contextualize service delivery modalities in pastoralist context
  • Strengthen community engagement strategies

Improve the quality of essential health services

  • Strengthen networks of primary care facilities for improved quality
  • Introduce combined facility-community Quality Improvement (QI) process
  • Co-design and pressure test a facilitated Participatory Learning Action (PLA) approach for improved quality Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health (MNCH) services uptake and outcomes
  • Introduce a performance management and performance-based incentives for PHC

Strengthen technical oversight and accountability for Primary Health Care

  • Implement a managerial accountability for PHC framework; revamp and test the community scorecard to ensure it works across the PHCU
  • Reorganize the governance structure of PHCU Measurement and Evaluation
A trained health worker counselling a pregnant woman
Young mother with her kid, North Ethiopia, Amref intervention
A young health worker on duty, Gambella Amref intervention, Ethiopia

Gender Intentional Design and Implementation 

All  life cycles of this project will adopt a gender lens to identify and respond to gender gaps and barriers. This helps deliver the project interventions that serve everyone and meet its objectives well.

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