EW finance food for starving Tigray Ayder Hospital staff an others

The complete and more than one year-lasting siege of the northern province of Ethiopia, Tigray, has provoked besides other extreme hardships a severe famine. This includes the whole staff of the medical institutions in the province. As more than 75% of these institutions a destroyed or severely damaged, the remaining institutions are much most important and must be supported.  

The responsible medical administrators of the remaining and still very basic performing Ayder University Hospital in the Tigray capital Mekelle are alarming the international community because the since months unpaid staff cannot continue its service because of the lack of food. To bring some relief, Etiopia-Witten achieved it to transfer the equivalent of 140.000 Euros in the local Ethiopian currency, Birr, to Mekelle and handed it over to the Ayder Hospital.

For this, for some weeks flour, vegetable oil, and vegetables for the basic local food “Injeera” could be bought on the local black market for the staff. A part of the money was given to feed the raped women treated in the hospital and to a kitchen (LiSa) that provided two daily meals to a selected group of starving pregnant and breastfeeding mothers.

Because of the ongoing siege and military actions against Tigray, we will need more funding for this.

Donation from Etiopia-Witten to Ethiopian Doctors for Tigray

As a result of the armed conflict that began in Tigray in November 2020, there was and is the need for the German NGO Etiopia-Witten to urgently bring humanitarian aid:

• EW has so far donated € 47,000 to the University of Mekelle as acute aid to improve the primary care of people in need there with medication and other medical equipment. This was done in particular to enable rapid first aid for victims of sexual violence (in Ayder Hospital alone, more than 360 severely traumatized women between the ages of 6 and 80 were treated).
  
  
• We received lists from senior doctors in Mekelle of urgently needed medicines and medical materials in Ayder Hospital and other hospitals in Tigray, which could not be made available by the Ethiopian government or NGOs. Our association has made another donation of € 50,000 available for this purpose.