Yoseph Mamo Azmera

Objectives Globally, cancer deaths are rising. In low-and-middle-income countries, there is a gap in access to palliative care (PC). We designed a feasibility trial to study the initiation of early PC in patients with cancer in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Methods A randomised controlled trial (RCT) of standard cancer care versus standard cancer care pl...

Background Deaths due to non-communicable diseases are rising worldwide, with low-income and middle- income countries (LMICs) particularly affected. Palliative care can reduce pain and suffering for patients with incurable disease. A gap in access to palliative care and research to support its implementation exists in LMICs, and cancer care is a pa...

Patient-reported outcomes and economic aspects of Palliative Care (PC) provision in low-income countries (LIC) are under-studied. Demonstrating the economic value of PC is key to sustainability and guiding health care policy. Our preliminary data in Ethiopia demonstrated a widespread need for PC, poor access to it, and high out of pocket payments (...

Objective: Providing effective medical care for non-communicable diseases (NCD) in rural sub-Saharan Africa has proved to be difficult because of poor treatment adherence and frequent loss to follow-up (LTFU). As the reasons are poorly understood, we have investigated LTFU in a rural Ethiopian community among patients with two contrasting, but comm...

The Federal Ministry of Health, Ethiopia, recognised the potential of the Practical Approach to Care Kit (PACK) programme to promote integrated, comprehensive and evidence-informed primary care as a means to achieving universal health coverage. Localisation of the PACK guide to become the ‘Ethiopian Primary Health Care Clinical Guidelines’ (PHCG) w...

p>Background: 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. Methods: We carried out a de...

Background: Palliative care aims to reduce physical suffering and the emotional, spiritual, and psychosocial distress of life-limiting illness. Palliative care is a human right, yet there are vast disparities in its provision: of the 40 million people globally in need of palliative care, less than 10% receive it, largely in high-income countries....

Full report authorship and details here: http://www.ncdipoverty.org/ethiopia-national-commission/

Palliative care reduces physical suffering and the emotional, spiritual and psychosocial distress of life-threatening illness. It can be offered at any time, including concurrently with life-prolonging therapies. Palliative care is a human right, yet there are significant disparities in its provision: of the 40 million people globally in need of pa...

Introduction One urgent goal of countries in sub-Saharan Africa is to dynamically scale up the education and work force of medical doctors in the training institutions and health facilities, respectively. These countries face challenges related to the rapid scale up which is mostly done without proper strategic planning, without the basic elements...

Acute rheumatic fever (ARF) and rheumatic heart disease (RHD) remain major causes of heart failure, stroke and death among African women and children, despite being preventable and imminently treatable. From 21 to 22 February 2015, the Social Cluster of the Africa Union Commission (AUC) hosted a consultation with RHD experts convened by the Pan-Afr...

Background Physical measurement reference values are helpful to manage patients, conduct surveillances and monitor and evaluate interventional activities. Such valuable data at a community level however, are almost non-existent in Ethiopia. The objective of this study was to determine anthropometrics and blood pressure in “apparently healthy indivi...

BACKGROUND: Physical measurement reference values are helpful to manage patients, conduct surveillances and monitor and evaluate interventional activities. Such valuable data at a community level however, are almost non-existent in Ethiopia. The objective of this study was to determine anthropometrics and blood pressure in "apparently healthy indiv...

BACKGROUND: Chronic Non-communicable Diseases are increasingly becoming more prevalent and burden to the health care system in developing countries including Ethiopia. However, evidences showing the magnitude of the problem in those countries are scarce particularly in a community setting. The objective of this study was to determine the magnitude...

Chronic Non-communicable Diseases are increasingly becoming more prevalent and burden to the health care system in developing countries including Ethiopia. However, evidences showing the magnitude of the problem in those countries are scarce particularly in a community setting. The objective of this study was to determine the magnitude of chronic n...

The burden of chronic non-communicable diseases is on the rise in middle and low income countries on top of the existing infectious diseases. Moreover, the distributions of the specific risk factors are not systematically identified in those countries hampering the designing of appropriate preventive and control strategies. The objective of this co...

Health and disease can only be distinguished by accurate and reliable reference values of a particular laboratory test. In interpreting laboratory test results, usually the reported values are compared with established reference values from developed countries. Now it is a fact that there is considerable variation in hematology reference intervals...

The biochemical reference ranges currently used in developing countries are derived from data collected from populations living in developed countries. However, it is a fact that there is considerable variation in biochemical reference intervals by several variables. Moreover, reference ranges provided by different laboratory manuals and books do n...

Globally, millions of people suffer from intestinal parasitic infections. These infections are among the most common resulting in considerable morbidity and mortality. In Ethiopia and particularly in Jimma and its surroundings intestinal parasitic infections are highly prevalent because of low living standards and poor environmental sanitation. The...

Intestinal schistosomiasis is prevalent in East Africa including Ethiopia. Constructed five years back, Gilgel Gibe dam is suspected to harbor the intermediate host for transmission of schistosomiasis. The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of intestinal schistosomiasis and risk factors among school children. A comparative cros...

ABSRACT BACKGROUND: Rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease continue to be a major public health concern for many resource-poor countries. Although considered most cost-effective and sustainable for treatment programs to be integrated into existing health systems, such recommendations are difficult to up-scale in rural settings. Additionally, a...

Due to increasing drug resistance, artemisinin-based combination chemotherapy (ACT) has become the first-line treatment of falciparum malaria in many endemic countries. However, irreversible ototoxicity associated with artemether/lumefantrine (AL) has been reported recently and suggested to be a serious limitation in the use of ACT. The aim of the...

Jimma University Hospital (JUH) in south west Ethiopia has been running an integrated rural chronic disease programme since 1999, focusing on treatment of epilepsy, diabetes and heart disease. The purpose of this review is to compare clinical data of the epilepsy patients with those previously published from a similar programme in Gondar university...

Chronic non-communicable diseases such as epilepsy, diabetes, cardiac disease and hypertension represent a growing but neglected burden in developing countries. Rural sufferers, distant from health facilities, bear this most acutely. In response, a community care programme has been developed at Jimma University Hospital and its allied health centre...

Typhoid fever is leading cause of morbidity in developing countries including Ethiopia. Isolation of Salmonella Typhi by culturing, from blood or other source, is the surest way of making laboratory diagnosis. However, in resource-limited countries, the Widal agglutination test provides cheaper and easy alternatives, though inappropriate technique...

An eighteen year old Ethiopian patient was admitted to Jimma teaching hospital, after presenting with classical hyperglycemic symptoms associated with abdominal pain, chronic diarrhea, cachexia, and radiological appearance of extensive pancreatic calcification. These clinical and radiologic findings correlated with the well-described entity of Fibr...