News: Women's Health Education Addressed

Due to the ongoing problems of disease, malnutrition, sanitation, good drinking water, and limited access to professional health care in rural Ethiopian villages, Ezra Rural Ministry has chosen to begin addressing the need for education among those in a village who are most influential in maintaining the health of the family- women.

The plan is to train sixty active Christian women in Butajira and Hosanna. Emphasis will be placed on choosing women who already have a place in village leadership, who can be educated and trained through three-day seminars which would include lectures, discussion, practical drama, and films. These sixty women would, in turn, train other women to teach basic health care and disease prevention in their own villages. Ezra Rural Ministry hopes to provide each of these sixty students with the book, Where There Is No Doctor-A Village Healthcare Handbook, which has been translated in the Amharic language.

Gete, a nursing school graduate and wife of ERM Director Dereje Shiferaw, will oversee this pilot-project over the next year. It is Gete's hope that the education of village mothers will increase community health in the rural areas of Ethiopia, where 85% of the population lives. It is Dereje's hope that doors, particularly Islamic village doors, will be opened to the Gospel.

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