In addition to providing emergency nutritional and medical relief in response to crises, AmeriCares has sustained partnerships with local groups and health care providers to help support general health care services. AmeriCares delivers critical supplies and targeted aid in times of need that are distributed to a network of partners in Ethiopia including referral hospitals, primary health clinics and rural health posts.

Snapshot of Ethiopia:

Nearly half of the country lacks access to basic medicines. And with over 75% of Ethiopians living on $2 or less per day, crushing poverty makes it difficult to care for people with otherwise easily treatable diseases. With only one doctor for every 45,000 people and a very high population growth rate, the critical health issues include:

• High infant and maternal mortality rates
• Respiratory infections, diarrhea and malaria remain leading causes of death
• Neglected tropical diseases are common

Since the 1980s, AmeriCares also supported emergency relief and ongoing medical assistance. Ongoing health needs were addressed through the establishment of a 53-bed hospital, which offers surgical, pediatric and maternal services to a rural community. General medical aid is also enhanced by targeted programs around specific diseases.

Other important work in recent years focused on stopping the infectious eye disease trachoma. Working with in-country partners and Pfizer, we supported treatment and prevention efforts to combat this disease and reverse a growing rate of blindness in the country.

In an effort to ease the profound human suffering caused by catastrophic famine in 2011 throughout the Horn of Africa, AmeriCares large scale emergency response includes ongoing shipments of medicines, supplies, and nutritional supplements, to help children and adults in refugee camps in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia.

In 2008, in the midst of a worsening food crisis, AmeriCares was ready to help, awarding a grant to a school-based feeding program for several hundred students and orphans.

In 2003, AmeriCares sent several airlifts and shipments of emergency aid to southern Ethiopia in response to crop failures that left 12.5 million people vulnerable to starvation. AmeriCares helped support feeding stations which provided sustenance for 25,000 people a day--and two therapeutic sites for children. We also delivered essential medicines and supplies, water purification systems, and waterproof tents.

AmeriCares has worked in Ethiopia for more than two decades, beginning with a famine in the 1980s that killed an estimated one million people. AmeriCares responded with shipments of nutritional supplements, essential medicines and supplies.

AmeriCares also donates medical products to qualified U.S. health care professionals who are traveling to Ethiopia to provide charitable medical care. Through this program, donated medicines and medical supplies reach impoverished and isolated communities where even basic medical care is inaccessible to the poor or often non-existent. AmeriCares donations cure infections, relieve pain, help patients manage chronic diseases and make life-changing surgeries possible.