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Blue Nile Children's Organization is run by a small staff and volunteers, both in Seattle and in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Many of our projects can be benefited by additional volunteers or interns. If you are interested in working for BNCO or would like to comment or ask questions please contact us!

Addis Ababa is the political and cultural capitol of Ethiopia and home to more than 2.7 million residents. It is divided into sub-cities, and each sub-city is divided into smaller administrative units called "kebeles". You can explore the lay-out of the city with this Interactive Map.

 

You can read about the city in many books and websites, but here are a few to get you started:

 

Wikipedia
Addis Ababa City Administration Home

The ROMC is located in Kolfe-Keranio sub-city (population nearly 440,000) and kebele 15/16 (population more than 130,000), shown here.

 

Kolfe-Keranio is known as a poor, crowded and underserved part of Addis Ababa. It does have some existing health resources. Most are located outside of our kebele, or are expensive and exist to serve a small community of foreign nationals that live in a small section of the kebele.

 

The ROMC staff informs us that in Kolfe-Keranio, there are three hospitals. These comprise a hospital dedicated to fistula repair (Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital), a hospital dedicated to the treatment of tuberculosis and leprosy (ALERT Centre), and a private, general teaching hospital (Bethel General Teaching Hospital). None of them is located in our kebele. The nearest Ministry of Health (MOH, that is, public, government-run) district hospital, where ROMC will refer patients, (Ras-Desta), is located outside of Kolfe-Keranio, in the Arada sub-city.

 

According to the most current listing of healthcare facilities from the MOH, Kolfe-Keranio has one MOH clinic, one MOH health center, four NGO clinics, and 65 private clinics. ROMC staff report that only one MOH and one NGO facility are located in our kebele, along with 12 private clinics. MOH facilities are quite inexpensive, but typically crowded and unable to see all of the poor patients in their service areas. Private facilities are too expensive for many residents to afford. NGO facilities are much less expensive than private ones, but more expensive than MOH facilities and still out of reach for many poor Ethiopians.