REPORTS AND PUBLICATIONS
This page contains our latest publications and reports. For a full list of publications, please click here.
An exploration of purposely produced smoke in Wollo , Ethiopia
This poster outlines the project undertaken by members of the THENA team which explored the reasons, values and perceptions of communities that purposely produce smoke. The accompanying editorial can be found here.
Ethiopian NCD Project: Baseline Capacity Assessment of Health Centres Summary Report.
This summary report outlines the baseline capacity assessment of health centres involved in the Novartis Social Business funded Federal Ministry of Health project to increase access to services through training and capacity building across Ethiopia.
Improving Household Air Quality: The neglected cultural dimension
Household air pollution is now recognized as the single largest environmental health risk factor worldwide contributing to the global burden of disease, with the World Health Organization (WHO) estimating that close to 4million people per year die prematurely as a result.
Managing hypertension in nurse-led, primary care clinics in rural Ethiopia
Providing health care for patients with hypertension has been difficult in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa because of lack of medical staff and facilities. The use of non-physician healthcare workers offers a possible solution, but little is known about the feasibility and clinical response to treatment.
Profile: Shitaye Alemu Balcha: committed to rural health care in Ethiopia
To work on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Africa is to work in a branch of medicine that some have not viewed as a priority for the continent. Shitaye Alemu Balcha, Associate Professor in Internal Medicine in the College of Medicine and Health Sciences of the University of Gondar, Ethiopia, and member of the THENA team would be happy to enlighten them.
Non-communicable disease clinics in rural Ethiopia: Why patients are lost to follow-up
Providing medical care for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in rural sub-Saharan Africa has
proved to be difficult because of poor treatment adherence and frequent loss to follow-up (LTFU). The reasons
for this are poorly understood.
Medical traditions and chronic disease in Ethiopia: a story of wax and gold?
Ethiopia is host to a variety of longstanding medical belief systems that coexist and function together, where modern medicine is often viewed as just another choice. This multiplicity of approaches to illness is accompanied by the Ethiopian custom of weaving layers of meaning, often contradictory, into speech and conversation - sometimes referred to as 'wax and gold', the 'wax' being the literal and the 'gold' the deeper, even hidden, meaning or significance
Community-based prevalence study of rheumatic heart disease in rural Ethiopia
Chronic Rheumatic Heart disease (RHD) continues to be a health problem in many low and middle income countries and especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Echocardiography has shown that the disease is far more widespread than may be detected by clinical assessment, but data are lacking on the prevalence and epidemiological features in rural Africa.
Studies of the epidemiology of type 1 diabetes in Ethiopia and similar countries in sub-Saharan Africa show that the pattern of presenting disease differs substantially from that in the West. Typically, the peak age of onset of the disease is more than a decade later with a male excess and a low prevalence of indicators of islet-cell autoimmunity. It is also associated with markers of undernutrition.