Ethiopia Looks to Become Africa’s Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Center

The Ethio Health Exhibition and Congress took place as Ethiopia’s largest multi-disciplinary healthcare professional development forum with anticipations to gather in excess of 3,000 medical and trade professionals. It also provided an ideal platform for stakeholders to discuss various issues across the entire health care value chain while also providing opportunities for professionals to advance their competencies.

Part of the event, the congress helped the healthcare system deal with the rising demand for improved clinical services. Medical experts, lawmakers, government leaders, and the business community were the primary targets of the conferences and panel discussions. Clinical excellence, patient safety, imaging and diagnostics, pharma, and primary healthcare were among the topics covered by the program, which was structured into five thematic categories. A tour of the Kilinto Pharmaceutical Industrial Park was also part of the program.

Market leaders from seven countries, including Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, Jordan, Sudan, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates took part in the exhibition and met with healthcare experts and businesspeople from around Ethiopia to explore prospective market links and technology transfer.

Ethiopia has also invested in developing a health workforce. There has been massive production of health professionals and thousands of health cadres join the health workforce every year. The health professional to population ratio reached 2.1 to 1000. As a result, significant strides were recorded on the key health outcome indicators in the past year. For example, mortality rates decreased to 59 per 1000 and average life expectancy grew to 66.6 years. The share of the total governmental health budget grew from 12Pct in 2019/20 to 13.2Pct in 2020/21. The procurement trend of the Ethiopian Pharmaceuticals Supply Agency showed an incredible growth from ETB4.8 billion in 2016/17 to ETB17.3 billion in 2020/21.