Mobile health service for Afar & Somali pastoralists in Ethiopia

The Mobile Health Service (MHS) has been piloted as a strategy to make human healthcare more easily accessible to mobile pastoralists in Ethiopia. The study “Mobile health service as an alternative modality for hard‑to‑reach pastoralist communities of Afar and Somali regions in Ethiopia” (2023) by Kasahun Eba et al., published in Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice 13:17 (https://doi.org/10.1186/s13570-023-00281-9), used the Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation and Maintenance (RE-AIM) framework to explore the dynamics of healthcare utilisation and what constrains and facilitates MHS in the two regions.

The study revealed that health service coverage increased in the districts of Somali and Afar Regions where MHS was implemented by providing hard-to-reach communities with the following services: reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health service; family planning; nutrition supply; timely referral with free transportation; immunisation; and treatment of malnourished children. The MHS is effective because it follows the movements of the pastoralist households with their herds. The authors recommend that the government institutionalise MHS as an alternative modality to deliver healthcare service to pastoralists.

Posted on 22 October 2023 in Pastoralism & Services, Pastoralism, Gender & Youth, Pastoralist Livelihoods & Nutrition