Notes from the Field

Click here to view a recent video of ASC Ethiopia.  

African Services Committee Co-Executive Director, Kim Nichols and ASC Communications Director, Eirik Omlie, recently returned from a productive visit to ASC Ethiopia's Health and Community Development Centers in Addis Ababa, Ziwey and Mekele, including a detour to ASC's growing honey farms located in remote Gheralta in Ethiopia's northern Tigray region, and a meeting with new U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia, Ambassador Michael Raynor. Click here to view a recent video of ASC's Ziwey Center.  

Spotlight on ASC Ethiopia

Traveling hundreds of miles from African Services Ethiopia headquarters and HIV/ TB testing and integrated care clinic in Addis Ababa to our clinics located in Zeway and Mekele, ASC's co-executive director Kim Nichols, and her mom, Ann, spent a very busy two weeks visiting three of our clinics in Ethiopia.

These annual trips provide an opportunity to witness first hand our clinics' higher levels of service, providing diagnostics, state of the art laboratory monitoring, and treatment for patients with HIV and TB, as well as supporting patients coming to these clinics with family planning and reproductive care, supplemental nutrition, and microlending for small business development, which has helped some of the most destitute of HIV affected households.

This trip also brought into focus additional services ASC is in an ideal position to provide, in large part to combat harsh new realities facing ASC clients, who comprise the most vulnerable children and families in the country. 

After two days at ASC's Addis Ababa Shola clinic, ASC Founder Asfaha Hadera, Kim and Ann spent a half day driving south to our clinic is Zeway where they met with a beneficiary of ASC's sheep-fattening micro-lending project, pictured above, who has tripled the number of sheep since beginning this PEPFAR grant-supported program. Selected women receive training in the care and importance of vaccinating and providing their new animals with a protein-rich diet. The initiative has helped many women like her profit from their sheep and achieve financial independence. 

"She's been able to send her three children to school because now she has money for school fees and supplies. She also says her health has improved because she has more to eat - as do her kids," Kim said.

"Her children are also getting nutritional support from ASC and she gets her ART drugs, care and HIV monitoring tests from ASC."

In the Fall of 2010, in collaboration with Castel Winery and BGI, African Services expanded to the southern region of Ethiopia with our Health and Community Development Center, in Zeway. In addition to micro-lending projects, the clinic provides community outreach and HIV prevention education; counseling and testing for HIV/AIDS; CD4 testing; vitamin and nutritional supplement distribution. Click here to learn more about our Zeway clinic.     

They also visited women in Mekele who participated in an ASC partnership with the French Embassy, which trained more than 100 commercial sex workers in traditional and modern hair styling. The training enabled participants to leave behind work in the sex industry by turning income-generating skills into sustainable sources of income. Commercial sex workers are regular clients who come to our clinics for free condoms, to participate in peer support discussions, as well as for care and support services for themselves and their children.

The ASC Health and Community Development Center, based in Mekele, was established in March 2007. Mekele is ASC's northernmost clinic, based in the Tigray Region, Asfaha's hometown. This clinic is based on the outskirts of Mekele, which is quickly becoming a principal economic and education center in Ethiopia. Services provided include community outreach and HIV prevention education; counseling and testing for HIV/AIDS; CD4 testing; vitamin and nutritional supplement distribution; micro lending for people living with HIV, and children's shoe distribution, and malaria and hepatitis B testing.

"Every other hospital or clinic in Mekele charges for their services - African Services Committee is free," said ASC Mekele's Site Coordinator, Abraham Gebrehiwot.

The travelers wrapped up their time in Ethiopia where it began, visiting ASC Ethiopia headquarters and the Henry van Ameringen Health and Community Development Center, located in the Shola Market in Addis Ababa, which was the first location established upon ASC's return to Ethiopia in September 2003. Located in the largest open-air market in Addis, this clinic provides free services to more than 6,000 of the most vulnerable people in this community, each year.

"We were the first ones to start free HIV testing and counseling in 2003," said Asfaha.

Some equipment and supplies are direly needed, such as a new generator, which provides clinics with much-needed power during frequent electrical outages in Addis Ababa. There is also a nationwide shortage of HIV test kits. Thanks to a recommendation from the Ethiopian Ministry of Health Regional Labs, Becton Dickinson was repairing one of the CD4 units at our Zeway clinic at the time of this visit. All five ASC Ethiopia clinics conduct these tests free of charge to clients and to a number of NGOs, clinics and hospitals.   

Visits to Ethiopia are not complete without a stop atop Entoto Mountain, home to members of ASC's Positive Kids program. "Every time I go back I follow up and see how everyone is doing," said Kim.

The program has served more than 40 HIV positive children who enrolled in our Pediatric HIV/AIDS case management program more than a decade ago. The program helped these children and their families, who live geographically isolated from the capital and far from most public health interventions, to access HIV and TB testing, treatment and care, supplemented by nutritional support, shoe distribution, and income generating projects.

"ASC's income generating programs on Entoto Mountain really show that access to a little capital can be the only thing standing between someone being successful or not. And once they have capital they don't seem to fail," Kim said.

Many of the original Positive Kids are approaching their teens and have grown up with dreams of attending secondary school, but funding is short.

"Now is the time to invest further: A donation of as little as a $1000 could pay for their entire secondary school fees, which would give them a really good shot at getting into university. We're talking about a dozen children, average age around 10. It would be so amazing."

-- Kim Nichols. Click here to donate to ASC Ethiopia and select Positive Kids Education Fund to help make their academic dreams a reality.

Whether it is to support our mobilization to help the most vulnerable families survive the severe drought, provide free HIV and TB testing, treatment and care, or nutritional support, education support or income generating projects to the poorest of the poor - please click here to donate today. We rely on your support and hope that you will continue to remember ASC in your giving.

SmartyPants Vitamins staffers recently joined African Services Committee partner Vitamin Angels on a trip to visit ASC's health clinics in Ethiopia‬. We are so grateful to Vitamin Angels and SmartyPants for all the amazing work they do to help provide life-changing nutrients to those who need them most.

Click here to read more about their trip and take a look at these spectacular photos, courtesy of Vitamin Angels.

In this photo, ASC distributes multi-vitamins and mineral supplements — thanks to generous donations by Vitamin Angels — to children and pregnant and lactating mothers. Our clinics are providing more than 20,000 children, women, and men with HIV and TB testing and treatment each year, nutrition for more than 7,000 (thanks in large part to Vitamin Angels' generous donations!), reproductive health for over 6,000, new shoes for nearly 18,000 (improving school attendance and helping to prevent the spread of intestinal parasites), and income generating support for nearly 100 families.

African Services Committee has saved and improved hundreds of thousands of lives in its more than twelve years in Ethiopia, providing free health services to the poorest of the poor in five regions, in full partnership with the Ethiopian Ministry of Health. With 90 local staff on the ground, we’re embedded in the fabric of local society. ASC also distributes multi-vitamins and mineral supplements, — thanks to generous donations by Vitamin Angels — to children and pregnant and lactating mothers.

Reflections on 2013

January 2, 2014

Happy holidays everyone! Updates straight from Ethiopia have been a long time coming, so we apologize for the delay. Things have been active at our five clinics, and with the end of the year, comes a little reflection on our accomplishments for 2013, our gratitude to all the partners that have made this year successful, and there is always a little bit of ‘luck’ involved.

What we are truly struck by this year is how ASC has grown stronger through its partnerships. We are so fortunate and ‘lucky’ to have these amazing development partners that support the work that we do here in Ethiopia. We would like to recognize a few of our partners for their unwavering support over this past year in our inaugural “Notes from the Field,” as we look back on 2013:

BGI Ethiopia and Castel Wineries, one of our most long-standing and prolific partners, has been a long supporter of our clinics including the Shola and  Kombolcha clinics. They also were the primary financial benefactor in assisting us with opening of our two clinics located in the southern region of the country, Hawassa and Ziway. These clinics service almost 10,000 clients each year, and have given us a base in the South to do our outreach.

Ethiopian Health & Nutrition Research Insitute (EHNRI) has been a great supporter of our work, including assistance maintaining our advanced lab equipment. Thanks to hard work and support from Ato Gunfan and Ato Teferi, both contacts at EHNRI, they pushed ASC to the top of the list for repairs on our CD4 machines in Mekele. The total cost of repairs was estimated at around 120,000 birr (~$6300), but with their help we were able to procure a new laser and the repair work for free. Our CD4 machine is back in working order, allowing us to monitor HIV+ clients and, if treatment-eligible, enroll them in our ART Treatment Program.

Population Services International (PSI) and DKT Ethiopia have long assisted us with procurement of family planning and HIV prevention materials. Every day, hundreds of men and women, including commercial sex workers, come to our clinics to obtain condoms and other methods of STD and pregnancy prevention. PSI recently extended their relationship with us and delivered over 400,000 condoms for distribution at our clinics, and DKT joined with then in giving an additional 50,000 condoms. Thanks to our partners, ASC has distributed over 3 Million condoms since our inception in 2003!

Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health and Regional Bureau of Health of Tigray are making it possible for us to move forward with additional testing programs at our site in Mekele. Tuberculosis (TB) is a major public health threat in Ethiopia, and thanks to our contacts at the health bureau, we were able to bypass a delay in the delivery of TB medicines, and were bumped to the top of the list. We now have all the TB drugs we need and are moving forward with a widespread TB testing campaign in Mekele.

ICAP - Ethiopia is a new partner for African Services in 2013. ICAP (The Internaional Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs) is based out of Columbia University, a neighbor to our African Services' offices based in West Harlem. It is thanks to our newly formed partnership with ICAP that ASC was able to fully outfit our newest clinic, Ziway, with all the necessary laboratory equipment and supplies, and enabled us to start ART (Anti-Retroviral Treatment) services to HIV positive clients. These services include CD4 testing, hematology and chemistry tests. Outside of the local hospitals, we are one of the only local organizations offering these tests and we do so at NO COST to our clients.

Save the Children is a new partner for ASC Ethiopia. We signed an agreement with them in 2012, and thanks to their supply of Plumpy’Nut and Plumpy'Sup, food substitutes and nutrition enrichment products for malnourished infants and children; we have seen wonderful improvement in the health of malnourished children at our clinics. We look forward to continuing this relationship in the future.

TOMS Shoes has been a valuable partner these past several years. In 2013 alone, we have distributed over 17,000 pairs of shoes to young men, women and children. It has been a wonderful way to get clients into the clinic and connect them to additional care, and has helped so many children from picking up parasites from going without shoes.

Vitamin Angels has been an amazing partner in Ethiopia for MANY years. With their support, ASC has been able to distribute hundreds of thousands of multivitamins to pregnant and lactating mothers and children under five. Without this help, these children would be unlikely to get the necessary vitamins and nutrients from food that they need to foster healthy growth.

We also want to thank YOU, our supporters, for all of your assistance over this past year. We heard so much about the fundraiser in October, and hoped that you enjoyed the sights, sounds, tastes and smells of our beloved country. Please don’t hesitate to come pay us a visit here in Addis, or in any of our clinics. We would love to have you…and of course, there will always be “bunna” (coffee) waiting for you.

Thank you and god bless.

Best—

Hana W/Gebrial, Acting ASC Ethiopia Country Director