20/03/2025
Resolution of the 36th Ethiopian Public Health Association conference
The 36th Annual conference and General Assembly meeting of EPHA was held from March 16-18/ 2025 at EPHA house conference hall in Kebena, Addis Ababa. The conference theme was “Global Public Health Threats and Their Response with three sub themes focusing on Global Health Security Agendas, Resilient Health System and RMNCAH-N. A total of high quality 40 oral and 48 poster presentations were selected and presented at this conference.
After deliberation of concurrent sessions, panel sessions and GA meeting, for the last 3 days, We, members, associate members, executives and advisory council members of the Ethiopian public health association came up with the following resolution out of which the call for action will be developed for consideration by different sector ministries, EPHA and its partners and the government of Ethiopia. Major areas of concern that were raised and discussed with possible solutions include:
1. Take an urgent and practical actions to curb the impact of the current global financial aid crisis.
2. Establish an Emergency fund for public health financing. Ethiopia should take this problem as an opportunity to learn and shift to domestic sustainable health financing.
3. We call upon the government of Ethiopia to at least cover 1/3rd of the financial deficit to the health sector as a starting point and continue to mobilize local resources
4. Public health data confusion and or misinformation should be considered as one of the pandemics as a public health threat and EPHA should be strengthened its capacity to generate credible data to inform policy
5. EPHA should also take the initiative to strengthen the public health data observatory as a means to have an interactive data for Ethiopia and Beyond
6. EPHA as a pioneer professional association of public health and, with its own building and capacity should re-visit and broaden its programs and its advisory and or advocacy role at national and regional level. To this end, the association should work hard to meet expectations from ministry of health, African CDC and other partners.
7. Health care financing should follow new and innovative approaches in the areas of health insurance, domestic finance mobilization and SIN taxes.
8. Funding and capacity building of the woreda health is critical to build a resilient health system.
9. The strategy to upgrade the current primary health system should focus on local capacity and resources.
10. It is traditionally observed that, at times of emergency, development projects are converted to emergency response projects. This should be avoided by early preparedness to minimize the impact on development projects including the allocation of contingency funding.
11. The annual conference of EPHA is an opportunity for the MoH to disseminate its programs in the selected thematic areas and to take lessons from the scientific papers and panel discussion. We believe and strongly recommend that MoH should be represented by at least one high level delegate or even a team of delegates to attend the whole conference dates.
12. This 11 point resolution should be developed into call for action and advocacy documents after being synthesized by the scientific committee and the advisory council respectively. This should be completed and disseminated within 1 month of the conference.
March 18/ 2025
EPHA House, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia