# How Ethiopia revised its essential health services package in 2019

Source: https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-eregata-ethiopia-ehsp-revision-hsr-2020/  
OnCo record `paper-eregata-ethiopia-ehsp-revision-hsr-2020` (Key paper). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Ethiopia's 2019 revision of its essential health services package ranked 1,018 interventions using seven criteria, including cost-effectiveness and financial risk protection, and made 570 of them free of charge.

## Summary

Published as "Revision of the Ethiopian Essential Health Service Package: An Explication of the Process and Methods Used". It describes the process the Ministry of Health followed in 2019: 35 consultative workshops with experts and the public to define scope, list interventions, agree criteria, gather evidence and compare interventions.

## Fields

- Kind: Key paper
- Last checked: 2026-11-04
- Journal: Health Systems & Reform
- Year: 2020
- DOI: 10.1080/23288604.2020.1829313
- Authors: Eregata GT, Hailu A, Geletu ZA, et al.
- Findings: Seven prioritisation criteria were used: disease burden, cost-effectiveness, equity, financial risk protection, budget impact, public acceptability and political acceptability.; 1,749 interventions were identified, narrowed to 1,442 relevant and then 1,018 evaluated: 594 (58%) high priority, 213 (21%) medium and 211 (21%) low.; Policy is to provide 570 interventions (56%) free of charge, with the rest available through cost-sharing (38%) or cost-recovery (6%).
- What it means: This package is how Ethiopia decides which services, including cancer services, public facilities provide and on what terms; it is the nearest thing to a national health technology assessment process.
- Caveats: Written by people who took part in the revision.; The abstract does not give the priority level of individual cancer interventions.

## Sources

- Health Syst Reform 2020: https://doi.org/10.1080/23288604.2020.1829313
- PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33300838/

## Connected records

- institutions: [Federal Ministry of Health, Ethiopia](https://onco.cc/institutions/ethiopia-ministry-of-health/)

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