During the last decade, Ethiopia has made significant progress in improving its emergency medical services; one of the reflections of this could be that it has established an emergency medicine specialization program in medicine and nursing programs, making it one of the first nations in Africa to do so. In October 2012, with the support of the Ministry of Health, the Ethiopian Society of Emergency Professionals (ESEP) was founded as a national society to become a professional organization that can assist emergency care providers across the country in saving lives, protecting property and the environment during emergencies and disasters. Currently, ESEP has over 500 members in all corners of Ethiopia and is Ethiopia’s largest network of emergency professionals. A unique aspect of the society is that it is a multidisciplinary professional organization that includes physicians, nurses, pre-hospital providers, community representatives and many more professionals in Emergency Services.
The mission of ESEP is to serve its members and the community by providing information, networking, and professional opportunities and to advance the emergency medicine and critical care profession. Considering the absence of a critical care society in Ethiopia and embracing the large community of early critical care providing community, the society has changed its name to the Ethiopian society of emergency and critical care professionals in 2019.
ESEP provides a platform for an alliance among professionals practicing in different parts of Ethiopia to assist its members, contribute to the expansion of emergency service by collaborating with government bodies for developing relevant policies & strategies to improve emergency service care, continue emergency education through curriculum development & implementation, work towards acquiring the financial capacity to conduct emergency medicine-related academic researches, encourage and advocate the rights of all emergency care professionals. Currently, ESEP is running multiple projects across the countries with multiple collaborators. It has gone a long way in contributing to the expansion of emergency and critical care services in Ethiopia; some of the achievements are; Improving research culture and capacity in acute care continuum, Establishment of African journal of emergency medicine and critical care (PAJEC).
In conclusion, ESEP has provided assistance in the development of hospital and pre-hospital emergency and critical care to support government and private facilities all over Ethiopia and beyond through collaboration with local and international academic institutions; hence, we extend our call to all professionals working in the acute care continuum to be a member of ESEP and publish their research work in PAJEC. ESEP will also continue to collaborate and work with other organizations and stakeholders to improve the quality of emergency and critical care services in Ethiopia and promote evidence-based practices in the field. We believe that through our collective efforts, we can make a significant impact on the quality of emergency care provided to patients.
Acknowledgement
Y.Boru and F.Kifle assisted with the writing and editing of this article.
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