With the financial assistance from the government of the Netherlands, Ethiopia is set to build a specialized cardiac center in Addis Ababa inside the Black Lion Specialized Hospital compound.
On Monday officials have laid the cornerstone for the constructional of the national cardiac center. The construction of the center is expected to be completed within the coming two years, according to the Ministry of Health of Ethiopia. The Ministry stated that the seven-story building will have state of the art facilities that can provide treatment for people with heart problem. When completed it will be giving free of charge heat treatment to 35 percent of the very port people of the country.
Reports show that heat disease has been one of the major noncommunicable diseases affecting many Ethiopians. Meanwhile, the treatment has not been available for many people because of the shortage of specialized cardiac hospitals.
The new center aims to solve this problem. The Ministry of Health of Ethiopia is also working on multiple projects in under Black Lion Specialized Hospital to provide treatment for the major noncommunicable diseases such as cancer and kidney problem, according to Dr. Amir Aman, Minister of Health of Ethiopia, who spoke at the ceremony.
The changing trend of cardiovascular disease and its clinical characteristics in Ethiopia: hospital based observational study of 2017 stated that although infectious diseases are still the leading causes of morbidity and hospital admission in developing countries like Ethiopia, in recent decades there has been significant epidemiological transition to noncommunicable diseases.
“In turn, the clinical pattern of the diseases and the shifts need to be characterized. CVDs are responsible for the majority of morbidity and mortality among NCDs in Ethiopia. Despite the rise of NCDs, the country’s full attention was in combating the communicable diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria,” the study by Yonas Getaye Tefera, Tadesse Melaku Abegaz, Tamrat Befekadu Abebe and Abebe Basazn Mekuria. The researchers were from the Department of Clinical Pharmacy, Department of Pharmacology, School of Pharmacy, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Gondar, Gondar, Ethiopia.