Health and Safety

It might by that disturbing messages about Ethiopia from past weeks news have caught some of yours eye – a long lasting disssatisfaction with the distribution of power has led to demontstrations and clashes between protestes and the police in South-Ethiopia Oromia province and in the capital Addis Abeba which resulted in declaring a state of emergency on sunday. Fortunately the situation in Soddo is peaceful and for the students the school year has started calmly.

Nonetheless this kind of situations illustrate the existing hazards in developing countries. Unexpected conflits like theses can influence the lives of thousands or even millions of people. The situation in Ethiopia is definately more stable than for example in Syria or in the neighbouring state South-Sudan and quite possibly the perceptible threath of terrorism is even lower than in Europe but as the as the past weeks have shown situations may change very rapidly. Hopefully the established emergency state pays off and the tensions risen can be solved diplomatically but the probability of these situations recurring is only lessened by the general developement of the society in which the oncoming generation who just sat down behind school desks plays a key role.

In addition to potential unstability in the society local children are in even grater danger from different health risks. Because of the climate there is a contstant threath of malaria but infections also spread due to the scarcity of clean drinking water. Children are more susceptible to chronic diseases because there is no routine health check-ups and they only go to the doctors with severe problems.

For a number of years NGO Damota has done routine health check-ups for the children in the programme to increase the attendance rate and better the quality of learning. The following video shows the check-ups done in the spring time and addresses the major problems that the students apper to have.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *