Ayder Comprehensive Specialized Hospital is the largest hospital in Mekele in the Tigray Region and the second largest hospital in Ethiopia.
Located in Mekele, [1] the teaching hospital is the largest hospital in the Tigray Region [2] and the second largest hospital in Ethiopia. [3] It is one of only a few referral hospitals in Ethiopia. [3]
The hospital opened in 2008 and serves a population of over 8 million people. [3] The hospital's services include: newborn care, [4] dialysis, and cancer care. [5] It is the only one in the Tigray Region with surgery facilities [6] and, in 2015, became the only hospital with magnetic resonance imaging facilities. [3]
In 2022, the hospital had an estimate of 3,600 staff [5] with Kibrom Gebreselassie as the Chief Executive Director. [6]
In 2020, during the Tigray War, the hospital's staff struggled to keep up with the influx of trauma patients and was running low in surgical supplies. [7] In 2022, over 60 patients with kidney disease died due to lack of medical supplies and 81 patients died due to a lack of medical oxygen. [5] The hospital remained short of medical supplies in January 2023, after the war ended. [8]
The Tigray Region is the northernmost regional state in Ethiopia. The Tigray Region is the homeland of the Tigrayan, Irob and Kunama people. Its capital and largest city is Mekelle. Tigray is the fifth-largest by area, the fourth-most populous, and the fifth-most densely populated of the 11 regional states.
Mekelle, or Mek'ele, is a special zone and capital of the Tigray Region of Ethiopia. Mekelle was formerly the capital of Enderta awraja in Tigray. It is located around 780 kilometres (480 mi) north of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, with an elevation of 2,254 metres (7,395 ft) above sea level. Administratively, Mekelle is considered a Special Zone, which is divided into seven sub-cities. It is the economic, cultural, and political hub of northern Ethiopia.
Mekelle University is a higher education and training public institution located in Mekelle, Tigray Region, Ethiopia, 783 kilometers north of Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa. Mekelle University is one of the largest public universities in Ethiopia. It has seven colleges, eleven institutes, and more than 90 undergraduate and 70 postgraduate programs. The student intake capacity of Mekelle University has reached 31,000 or 10% of Mekelle's population.
Hagere Selam is a town in northern Ethiopia. Located on the Mekelle-Abiy Addi regional road, it is located at an elevation of 2650 metres above sea level. The town is the administrative center of the Dogu'a Tembien woreda. The weekly market is on Saturdays.
Medical neutrality refers to a principle of noninterference with medical services in times of armed conflict and civil unrest: physicians must be allowed to care for the sick and wounded, and soldiers must receive care regardless of their political affiliations; all parties must refrain from attacking and misusing medical facilities, transport, and personnel. Concepts comprising the principles of medical neutrality derive from international human rights law, medical ethics and humanitarian law. Medical neutrality may be thought of as a kind of social contract that obligates societies to protect medical personnel in both times of war and peace, and obligates medical personnel to treat all individuals regardless of religion, race, ethnicity, or political affiliation. Violations of medical neutrality constitute crimes outlined in the Geneva Conventions.
Mekelle 70 Enderta FC is an Ethiopian football club based in Mekelle, Ethiopia. They are a member of the Ethiopian Football Federation and currently play in the top division of Ethiopian football, the Ethiopian Premier League. The club was promoted to the Ethiopian Premier League for the first time after the end of the 2016–17 season. In the 2018/19 season Mekelle 70 Enderta became champion of the Ethiopian Premier League and represented Ethiopia at the 2019 CAF Champions League but fall short in the first round.
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted hospitals around the world. Many hospitals have scaled back or postponed non-emergency care. This has medical consequences for the people served by the hospitals, and it has financial consequences for the hospitals. Health and social systems across the globe are struggling to cope. The situation is especially challenging in humanitarian, fragile and low-income country contexts, where health and social systems are already weak. Health facilities in many places are closing or limiting services. Services to provide sexual and reproductive health care risk being sidelined, which will lead to higher maternal mortality and morbidity. The pandemic also resulted in the imposition of COVID-19 vaccine mandates in places such as California and New York for all public workers, including hospital staff.
The Tigray war was an armed conflict that lasted from 3 November 2020 to 3 November 2022. It was a civil war that was primarily fought in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia between forces allied to the Ethiopian federal government and Eritrea on one side, and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) on the other.
The Mekelle offensive was a military campaign fought at the start of the Tigray War between the national armed forces of Ethiopia and the Tigray Region. The Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) launched an offensive aimed at seizing the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) controlled regional capital of Mekelle starting on 17 November 2020.
This timeline of the Tigray War is part of a chronology of the military engagements of the Tigray War, a civil war that began in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia in early November 2020.
Sexual violence in the Tigray War included, according to the United Nations Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Pramila Patten, people forced to rape family members, "sex in exchange for basic commodities", and "increases in the demand for emergency contraception and testing for sexually transmitted infections".
All sides of the Tigray war have been repeatedly accused of committing war crimes since it began in November 2020. In particular, the Ethiopian federal government, the State of Eritrea, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and Amhara Special Forces (ASF) have been the subject of numerous reports of both war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Beginning with the onset of the Tigray War in November 2020, acute food shortages leading to death and starvation became widespread in northern Ethiopia, and the Tigray, Afar and Amhara Regions in particular. As of August 2022, there are 13 million people facing acute food insecurity, and an estimated 150,000–200,000 had died of starvation by March 2022. In the Tigray Region alone, 89% of people are in need of food aid, with those facing severe hunger reaching up to 47%. In a report published in June 2021, over 350,000 people were already experiencing catastrophic famine conditions. It is the worst famine to happen in East Africa since 2011–2012.
On 28 November 2020, Mekelle was hit with an airstrike campaign during the Mekelle offensive of the Tigray War.
The Togoga airstrike was an airstrike by the Ethiopian Air Force on the town of Togoga in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia, on a market day, during the Tigray War, on 22 June 2021. 64 people were killed and 180 others were injured.
This Timeline of the Tigray War is part of a chronology of the military engagements of the Tigray War, a civil war that began in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia in early November 2020.
This Timeline of the Tigray War is part of a chronology of the military engagements of the Tigray War, a civil war that began in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia in early November 2020.
The Ethiopia–Tigray peace agreement, also called the Pretoria Agreement or the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement (CoHA), is a peace treaty between the government of Ethiopia and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) that was signed 2 November 2022, wherein both parties agreed to a "permanent cessation of hostilities" to end the Tigray war. The agreement was made effective the next day on 3 November, marking the second anniversary of the war.
During the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine The Russian Military has repeatedly attacked Ukrainian medical facilities, hospitals, clinics, and ambulances, and health workers. The Ministry of Defense of the United Kingdom stated that Russia was prioritizing attacks on Ukrainian medical facilities as a method of warfare, often striking these, as well as power infrastructure with Iranian-made drones such as Shahed 131, Shahed 136.
On August 26, 2022, an airstrike allegedly from the Ethiopian National Defense Force hit a kindergarten in Tigrayan capital of Mekelle, killing seven people including two children.