Ensure Ethiopia Dairy Project

10 years ago today, we developed these meassage to create awarness about aflatoxin in 3 local languages (Amharic, Tigrigna and Oromiga).
Aflatoxin is a chemical tocin produced by fungus and damges human liver.

Food Safety Master Plan of Ethiopia. Loading....

"Ethiopia is poised to take a significant stride in ensuring national food safety as it collaborates with the African Union Commission to craft a comprehensive roadmap.

Dr. Ashagre Zewdu, a consultant from Addis Ababa University engaged by AU Commission, unveiled this ambitious project during a presentation he made to food control stakeholders on December 11, 2023. The initiative aims to assess the current status of food safety on a national scale, with a crucial first step involving the meticulous gathering of data.

Dr. Ashagre emphasized the foundational importance of data gathering in creating the roadmap. This meticulous process will enable a thorough assessment of various institutions, providing insights into the current state of food safety across the nation. The initiative comes at a crucial juncture, recognizing the imperative role of food safety on the agenda of numerous sectors within Ethiopia.

Ms. Heran Gerba, Director General of Ethiopia’s Food and Drug, underscored the collaborative nature of the endeavor, emphasizing the need for support from all institutions. She highlighted the importance of offering information to the committees
involved in shaping the roadmap, thereby ensuring a comprehensive and well-informed approach.

The crafting of the roadmap involves input from key governmental bodies, including the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Trade and Regional Relations, and the Ministry of Health and many others.

At the national level, the African Union Commission and other pertinent organizations are actively collaborating with the Ethiopian Food and Drug Authority to drive this critical project forward."

Please find yet another publication from Ensure project on Genomic characterization of Listeria from dairy products of Ethiopia.

This is the 14th publication emanated in one way or another from Ensure project and I want to congratulate everyone for our collaborative success together.

I want to thank especially Dr. Jasna for accepting the isolates and getting them sequenced at Penn-state at Dr. Ed’s lab together with their graduate students.
I think this is the first paper in Ethiopia that covered such work and it is all new frontier area of science for many of us that we need to build more capacity locally with the support of our partners in the near future.

We want to thank Gates foundation for sponsoring the project once again and covering the publication fee for this and previous papers. It has been a very encouraging incentive for us to invest our time on drafting manuscripts.

https://mail.esphm.net/content/news-and-events

https://et.usembassy.gov/u-s-ambassador-launches-two-new-usaid-projects-on-water-hygiene-and-sanitation-worth-90-million/

U.S. Ambassador Launches Two New USAID Projects on Water, Hygiene and Sanitation (Worth $90 Million) Addis Ababa, November 3, 2023 – Today Ervin Massinga, U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia, and Ambassador Asfaw Dingamo, the State Minister for Water Supply and

https://et.usembassy.gov/u-s-ambassador-launches-two-new-usaid-projects-on-water-hygiene-and-sanitation-worth-90-million/

The result of an evaluation study done on Ensure Ethiopia Dairy Project intervention training indicated a reduction of microbial load and improvement of the KAP of small holder women dairy farmers. The evaluation was was led by TARTARE project in partnership with the Ensure project. The project team involved in the intervention training were happy to learn that their training brougt a significant change on milk hygiene by reducing bacterial load and improving KAP of the women. This indicates that the training developed by Ensure project was appropriate for scale up at the national level and the Government of Ethiopia through its institutions like the ministry of agriculture E should take up this in the future. The project want to thank Dr. Kerry Kaylegin, Dr. Alganesh Toal and Abdi Keba for developing the training module and delivering it to more 120 women in 12 sites in 3 regions of Ethiopia.

The economics evaluation (cost-benefit analysis) of the training is also under going on by TARTARE project to evaluate if the Ensure training can be feasible and appropriate for investment or there should be adjustments to be made to make the training intervention to be make it less costly to match the benefit when compared with the cost.

The 12th publication that emanated from the project. Many more papers from the project are in the pipeline too.