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    Lisa Hymas on Envisioning a Different Future With Family Planning in Ethiopia

    October 12, 2011 By Theresa Polk
    ECSP caught up with Lisa Hymas, senior editor at Grist, last week during the first South by Southwest (SXSW) Eco conference and she spoke about her recent visit to Ethiopia to see the country’s community health extension program in action. “Ethiopia has a big challenge around population,” Hymas said, “but the government is committed to bringing that down.”

    The government extension program places health-workers – young women, for the most part, who have received basic training – directly into each community, where they are able to give out immunizations, provide advice on nutrition, teach families how to properly hang bed nets to prevent mosquito-borne illnesses, and provide family planning services and advice.

    Thanks to the program, these health workers and those in the communities they service can “envision very different lives for themselves than their mothers had,” Hymas explained. For instance, one woman recounted that her mother gave birth to 10 children, “and almost died giving birth to the last one, because there was no access to birth control, and there was no good access to health care.” In contrast, she is now able to have a career and to use family planning to delay and space her own childbearing.

    For more on Ethiopia’s health extension program, see Schuyler Null’s report on visiting a village health clinic near the town of Fiche last spring.
    Topics: community-based, development, Ethiopia, family planning, From SXSW Eco, gender, global health, maternal health, On the Beat, PHE, population, SXSW, video
    • http://twitter.com/geoffdabelko Geoff Dabelko

      Thanks so much Lisa for speaking with us in Austin. Great to hear about your trip to Ethiopia. It really is a shame more US-based journalists can't get overseas to cover these environment, population, and development stories.  Great that you were able to.

      Folks may also be interested in Roger-Mark De Souza's population-environment presentation from the same conference. He features examples from Ethiopia as well.  Video available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anhbRYJDQIQ&feature;=colike

    • http://www.grist.org/people/Lisa+Hymas Lisa Hymas

      Thanks — great to be able to talk to you guys.  Here's more about my trip to Ethiopia to visit health centers and family-planning groups: http://www.grist.org/article/2010-11-17-population-challenge-up-close-personal-ethiopia

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