From 1997-2010, the Carter Center-assisted Ethiopian Public Health Training Initiative worked successfully in partnership with seven Ethiopian universities and the Ethiopian government to improve the health of underserved Ethiopians by enhancing the quality of pre-service training that health staff receive.
One of the main goals of the program was to help other low-resource countries replicate EPHTI's successes.
In 2007, EPHTI held a replication conference in Addis Ababa--the first of its kind--to illustrate the outstanding effect the program has had in helping Ethiopia meet the growing need for trained health care workers in the country.
Attendees included representatives from the ministries of health, education, and science and technology from nine African countries-Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda, plus the region of Southern Sudan-who learned about the initiative's activities through a series of presentations and discussions. Read the press release: U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Delegation to Tour Africa >
To see the program's accomplishments firsthand, 60 attendees traveled by bus to Debre Zeit, southeast of Addis Ababa, to visit Defense College's facilities and tour two health centers.
After witnessing the progress being made in Ethiopia through EPHTI, several other African countries have expressed interest in adapting EPHTI's model to address their own public health challenges in resource-limited environments.
For example, at the invitation of the Liberian government, the Carter Center Mental Health Program launched a five-year initiative in 2010 to help create a sustainable mental health system in the post-conflict country, which had only one psychiatrist and one psychiatric hospital for a nation of 3.4 million people. Learn more about the Carter Center's work in Liberia (PDF) >
The Ethiopia Ministries of Health and Education have made the full collection of training materials available for other countries to learn from the Ethiopian experience. To assist Francophone countries interested in adapting EPHTI materials, several of EPHTI's learning materials have been translated into French through a partnership between The Carter Center and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Please sign up below for important news about the work of The Carter Center and special event invitations.
