Ethiopia

Site Insitution: Addis Ababa Hospital
Research Areas: Health Systems Research, Surgery, Anesthesiology

Site Description:

Established in 1950 as the University College of Addis Ababa (UCAA), Addis Ababa University (AAU) is the oldest and largest university in Ethiopia. It has a current enrollment of 48,673 students (33,940 undergraduate, 13,000 master’s and 1,733 PhD students) and 8,709 staff (3,110 academics, 4,346 admin support staff and 1253 health professionals). The University has 10 colleges, four institutes that run both teaching and research, and six research institutes. AAU offered its first master’s degree program in 1979 and its first PhD program in 1987. Through its 14 campuses in Addis Ababa and other branches throughout the country, AAU runs 70 undergraduate and 293 graduate programs and offers various specializations in health sciences, biochemistry, epidemiology, public health, pharmacology, and behavioral/social Sciences. Over 222,000 students have graduated since its establishment.

In 2018, AAU started implementing a flagship program on surgical infection prevention based on critical perioperative standards outlined in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Surgical Safety Checklist. Lifebox, a global nonprofit organization focused on improving surgical safety in LMICs, was created by the same individuals who developed the checklist. Dr. Tom Weiser, the GHES mentor at Stanford University who helped create the WHO’s Surgical Safety Checklist and is a member of Lifebox, played a key role in the implementation of the WHO’s Surgical Safety Checklist in Ethiopia. The checklist project, which eventually became known as the Clean-Cut Program, has since evolved into a robust partnership between Stanford and AAU. The work produced from this collaboration has evolved into a quality improvement program that has been implemented in numerous hospitals throughout the country. The program was recently incorporated by the Ministry of Health as part of its Saving Lives Through Surgery (SALTS) initiative, which the MOH aims to implement in every surgical hospital in the country. Research fellowships can build on this collaboration and effort by supporting the development of curricula for trauma care, operative maternal care, anesthesia care, and quality improvement, as well as implementation of team training and service delivery improvement. Depending on the level of the fellow, opportunities for engaging and collaborating with trainee and junior staff surgeons, anesthetists, and other clinicians through a process of organizing complex perioperative and emergency surgery care, approaching injured patients in a structured and standardized manner, and developing mechanisms for surveillance that will help strengthen the surgical health system and develop the skills of future clinical leaders.

AAU was part of the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI), funded by NIH/Fogarty, to promote faculty development and research skills. They extended this work into the Health Professionals Education Partnership Initiative (HEPI), to be able to continue their efforts to improve medical education. Through the MEPI and HEPI programs, AAU developed a strong infrastructure to support rigorous and innovative research, and cohorts of health professionals with comprehensive training in research methodology continue to work at AAU and could be a source of future GHES mentors.