Community-based health extension policy implementation in Ethiopia: a policy experience to scale-up.

Abstract

Ethiopia has launched innovative community-based health policy in 2003. It was designed to accelerate the expansion of community-based health facilities and basic health services. The program established a health post at the lowest administrative unit level to serve in the villages. The policy implementation was supported by many stakeholders to improve the health indicators of the country. All the concerted efforts and public participation has helped the implementation of the policy and improvement of primary health services in rural communities. Thus, participating communities through grassroots mobilization in similar resource limited settings as experienced in this policy review could be scaled up to other health policies for its successful implementation.