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On this trip, for the first time, midwives from Kent  flew out to the Ethiopian town of Mekele, at their own expense, to offer help with training midwifes and village birth attendants in the surrounding Ethiopian villages. From what I saw it was challenging but immensely rewarding.  Many of the health workers will be able to use their new found skills immediately. Many will see more than twenty babies born every month!

Dr Mark Jones from "Health for All"

How to explain Ethiopia?

Extraordinary would be one way. There's extreme poverty, but the country, especially in the north is extremely beautiful. I travelled with a charity based in Canterbury, Health for All. We arrived in the northern town of Mekele and within a few hours we were taken to the public hospital to see the maternity wards. What we saw and what we heard was profoundly shocking. The  health service is in need of help. There's a lack of skilled staff and a shortage of money.

But that was why the charity is there - too see for themselves what was needed, to take guidance from the Tigrai Health Bureau about the most urgent needs and to do what they can to help.

Dr Mark Jones from "Health for All"

Both sides agreed that there was an urgent need for more midwifery training. The four midwives from East Kent that had made the journey were soon teaching simple procedures to nursing and midwifery students.

It's the sort of the partnership the UK are being urged to encourage. At the turn of the century the developed world set ambitious Millennium Development Goals for health.

Top of the list was to reduce by two-thirds the under-five mortality rate by 2015  and in terms of maternal health, to reduce by three-quarters the maternal mortality ratio.
A recent report recommended that the government encouraged and supported partnerships such as the one Health For All are creating. It could become a template for other NHS organisations.

And so this will become a regular trip. Health for All are now hoping that the government will do their bit to support them and others in this extraordinary but challenging country.