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 Accounts from residents, medical workers and humanitarian groups
illustrate people's plight as Ethiopia struggles to revive a heavily
damaged healthcare system in Tigray three months after fighting
erupted between the military and the region's former ruling party,
the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF).
Some hospitals are barely functioning, with no water, electricity or
food, they said. Most were looted of medicines; staff members fled.
"The health system in Tigray is reportedly nearly collapsing," the
United Nation's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
(OCHA) said in a Feb. 4 report, noting that only three of the
region's 11 hospitals were working properly.
Ethiopian Health Minister Lia Tadesse said conditions were improving
rapidly. The government has sent supplies to 70 of the region's 250
health facilities, along with 10 ambulances, she told Reuters last
week.
"So many health facilities have been looted, so we are working to
get more equipment to the region," she said. "The focus is to
restore services, supporting health workers to come back and ensure
they have the supplies."
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed declared victory over the TPLF two months
ago, but details of the devastation have been slow to emerge as
communications to the region remain patchy, and the government
tightly controls access for journalists and aid workers. Reuters has
not been able to visit the region and could not independently verify
accounts provided by residents and medical workers.
Prior to the outbreak of fighting on Nov. 4, most people in Tigray
had easy access to a hospital or clinic, according to the Ministry
of Health.
The conflict disrupted basic services, including diabetes treatment
and maternal care, leading to "too many preventable deaths", the
International Committee of the Red Cross said in a Jan. 27
statement.
Only 30 of the region's 280 ambulances are still available,
according to OCHA.
One woman described searching the northern Tigray town of Sheraro,
on Dec. 22 for pills to prevent pregnancy after a friend told her
she had been gang-raped by five men.
"Not a single worker was in the hospital," the woman told Reuters by
phone, saying she was too afraid to be identified. "The whole
hospital was looted ... Apart from the roof and doors, nothing was
left."
She tried a health centre, but said it too had been looted.
SLOW RECOVERY
When French aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without
Borders) visited the northern city of Adigrat in mid-December, the
hospital was mostly deserted, it said in statement last week. There
were hardly any medicines, and no food, water or money.
Some injured patients were malnourished, the group's emergency
coordinator for Tigray, Albert Vinas, said in the statement.
Some services have since resumed, but the hospital still has no
chemicals for its laboratory and no therapeutic food for
malnourished children, an Ethiopian medical worker stationed there
told Reuters on Saturday. He asked not to be identified, because he
was not authorized to speak to journalists.
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 Hospitals in the towns of Adwa
and Axum, in central Tigray, also had no
electricity or water when MSF visited. All the
medicines had been stolen from Adwa hospital and
furniture and equipment broken, Vinas said.
"I saw people arrive at hospital on bicycles
carrying a patient from 30 km (19 miles) away,
and those were the ones who managed to get to
hospital," he said. "People die at home."
MSF is now supporting four regional hospitals
along with smaller health centres, and running
mobile clinics in 15 locations.
RURAL AREAS OUT OF REACH
Most rural parts of Tigray remain out of reach to humanitarian
groups because of continuing insecurity, or because they lack
permission to go there, aid workers told Reuters. The TPLF withdrew
from the regional capital Mekelle and major cities, but low-level
fighting has continued in some areas.
Ethiopia's Ministry of Peace said on Saturday that it was "moving
with urgency to approve requests for international staff movements
into and within Tigray" to ensure humanitarian assistance is
expanded without delay.
A team from international aid group Action Against Hunger reached a
town west of Mekelle for the first time on Jan. 23 and found it
"pretty deserted". "We want to start having mobile
health and nutrition clinics to operate in the rural areas," the
group's country director Panos Navrozidis told Reuters, but added
security was still fragile.
Staffing at medical facilities also remains a problem.
As many as 20 or 30 women were giving birth unattended daily in the
central town of Shire because the hospital is not staffed overnight,
an aid worker who visited last week told Reuters.
Almost all healthcare workers in Tigray had gone unpaid since the
conflict began, a regional government report noted on Jan. 8, and
three healthcare workers told Reuters last week they had still not
been paid.
Health Minister Tadesse said money was being sent to local
authorities as quickly as possible. Hospitals in Shire and Axum were
functioning again, she said, although Adwa hospital remained out of
service.
Help is coming too late for some.
One woman told Reuters her 55-year-old mother died in Mekelle on
Dec. 4 after the family was unable to find insulin.
Mehbrit, who asked to be identified by one name for safety reasons,
said she tried hospitals, the Ethiopian Red Cross Society and other
diabetics, but no one had spare insulin.
For days, she said, she jolted awake each night to check her
mother's laboured breathing.
"I was praying to God to bring mercy in the house," Mehbrit said.
"The insulin came 13 days after my mother died."
(Reporting by Nairobi newsroom; Writing by William Maclean; Editing
by Alexandra Zavis and Frances Kerry)
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