Progress is the best medicine

Half of all HIV-infected people live in Africa, and 1.2 million of them are in Ethiopia. One third of the Ethiopian population is suffering from tuberculosis. A million Ethiopians are blind. But whilst in Germany there is about one doctor for about 390 inhabitants, in Ethiopia one doctor is statistically speaking responsible for about 43,000 people. And in rural areas there are often no medical facilities at all. The consequence of the catastrophic standard of medical care is that even harmless ailments can often be lethal. Menschen für Menschen is endeavouring to tackle this problem by building dispensaries, clinics and hospitals, accompanied by intensive education and vocational training programmes for doctors, caregivers and nurses.

In addition, Menschen für Menschen has initiated a large-scale anti-HIV campaign which not only supports infected persons, but fights the causes of new infection. One of the actions in the project areas was to hand out a million condoms free of charge. Numerous campaigns are attempting to break the silence about AIDS and to educate people.

Our successes to date:

– 86 dispensaries

– 11 polyclinics

– 3 hospitals

– 39 ambulances

– 46.605 eye surgery procedures (trachoma)

– Major anti-HIV campaigns