Launching of IHME project

Date: September 01, 2019

Location: Addis Ababa,Ethiopia

Speaker

• Dr. Ebba Abate (Director general of EPHI)
• Dr. Amir Aman (Minister of Ethiopian Ministry of health(MOH))
• Dr. Solomon Zewdue (Country director of BMGF)
• Professor Mohsen Naghavi (Director of Subnational Burden of Disease Estimation of IHME)
• Dr. Alemnesh Hailemariam Mirkuzie (Coordinator of NDMC)
• Dr. Awoke Misganaw ( Advisor of NDMC)

The Ethiopia Public Health Institute (EPHI) has launched a new partnership project between EPHI and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). The project is led by the National Data Management Centre for health (NDMC) of EPHI. This four-year project received 12 million USD fund from Bill and Melinda Gates foundation (BMGF). The fund is to be used by EPHI/NDMC to achieve the following three major project objectives

1. Improve national and sub-national disease burden estimates

2. Maximize utilization of evidence for decision by FMoH and other relevant stakeholders

3. Build capacity of the center.

During the launching ceremony, Dr. Ebba Abate, Director General of EPHI has welcomed the guests and has made an opening remark, he highlighted the importance of this collaborative partnership for generating high quality evidence for high level decisions. Dr. Amir Aman, the Ethiopian health minister, Dr. Solomon Zewdue country director of BMGF and Professor Mohsen Naghavi who is leading the project from IHME side in their keynote speeches addressed the importance of building a national system to generate reliable GBD estimate for Ethiopia and the sub-national states and building capacity to improve the relevance of evidence to inform high level decisions including FMoH policies and strategies and for the sub-national states to have a reliable disease burden estimates to understand their local problems and to prioritize interventions accordingly to save life and improve livelihood. Moreover, Dr. Alemnesh Hailemariam Mirkuzie, the coordinator of the NDMC has presented what NDMC has achieved in a year period since its establishment and about the potential of IHME-EPHI project in building data centric institute and Dr. Awoke Misganaw, the project co-lead from IHME side has presented high level 2017 GBD national level estimates that can be used to inform policy and decisions.