MICHU, the name selected by SPHMMC partners, means "comfort or comfortable" in Amharic and symbolizes not only the goals for the new clinic in regards to family planning and reproductive health, but also recognizes the University of Michigan's collaborative role in reproductive health services and training in Ethiopia and other African countries (for example, the long history of maternal health work begun by Dr. Timothy Johnson in Ghana).
The medical school platform with Ethiopia was spearheaded by Senait Fisseha, MD, JD, Adjunct Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, who is now Director of International Programs for the Susan Buffet Foundation. Under Fisseha's leadership, UMMS and its Ethiopian partners have been awarded significant funding to establish family training programs, residency and subspecialty training programs, a collaborative platform for identifying pressing faculty development and education needs (EM-PACE), and, most recently, the UMMS Center for International and Reproductive Health Training (CIRHT), which is directed by Dr. Lia Tadesse Grebremedhin.
MICHU was established in collaboration with CIRHT and is a large, patient-centered clinic that sets a new standard for the provision of Reproductive Health (RH) services in the public sector in Ethiopia. It is expected to be the model for all RH clinics that will be expanded in the public teaching hospitals throughout the country. It has the capacity to serve 40-50 patients a day and will offer counseling, family planning care, and abortion services. The RH fellowship includes a research component in addition to pre-service training in reproductive health.
It is the hope and expectation that the new RH clinic and fellowship will add to the existing body of collaborative platform work and position SPHMMC to become the regional reproductive training and research center and eventually serve as a hub for East Africa.
Read more about MICHU here.
Read more about the Ethiopia platform here.
*Thank you to Ms. Janet Hall for most of the material in this article and for the photographs. Ms. Hall serves as the Chief Administrator of Operations and Finance for CIRHT and Chief Department Administrator, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.