An Ethiopian government program that recruits high school graduates from local communities and gives them one year of training to become Health Extension Workers, stationed at health posts serving their own communities, created in response to the country's severe shortage of physicians and its need for an alternative model of health care delivery in underserved rural areas. Health Extension Workers deliver services across four core areas: hygiene and environmental sanitation, family health services including maternal and child health, disease prevention and control, and health education and communication, functioning as the front line of Ethiopia's primary health care system at the community level. By building a large cadre of community-based health workers drawn from and stationed within the populations they serve, the program extended basic preventive and family health services to rural communities that had previously had little or no access to any formal health worker.
Facts
Sponsoring BodyFederal Ministry of Health (Ethiopia) 1 Health GoalDeliver health promotion, immunization and other disease prevention measures along with a limited number of high-impact curative interventions 1 Geographic Scope Program status (class) Target Population Classification
Program KindSanitation or Water Program 1 Connections
Associated With
Source Health in Ethiopia (Wikipedia)
Delivers Practice
In the Other Atlases
Found In
Also in Geography Atlas: where this subject is found.
Sources
1. Health in Ethiopia (Wikipedia)
Overview, reach and targets
The health service currently reaches about 72% of the population and The Federal Ministry of Health aims to reach 85% of the population by 2009 through the Health Extension Program (HEP)
Overview, program design statement
The HEP is designed to deliver health promotion, immunization and other disease prevention measures along with a limited number of high-impact curative interventions.
- Wikipedia 'Health in Ethiopia': 'A central feature of the sector is the priority given to the Health Extension Programme, which delivers...'; checked 2026-09-27.
Article text
The health service currently reaches about 72% of the population and The Federal Ministry of Health aims to reach 85% of the population by 2009 through the Health Extension Program (HEP)
Program classification, entity description sentence
Health Extension Workers deliver services across four core areas: hygiene and environmental sanitation, family health services including maternal and child health, disease prevention and control, and health education and communication, functioning as the front line of Ethiopia's primary health care system at the community level.
Associated With: Health Systems and Policy, Health system section
A central feature of the sector is the priority given to the Health Extension Programme, which delivers cost-effective basic services that enhance equity and provide care to millions of women, men and children.
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