The Ministry of Health issued several directives last week dealing with the working conditions of health workers, allowing staff to transfer between regional states and multi-licensing in the medical field.

The directives also decentralise the assignment of health workers. It also allows graduated medical students to invoke and finalise contract termination from medical services at their respective regional states, if they can pay the full 457,000 Br of their tuition.

Medical staff workers other than doctors have similarly been included in the scheme, which apportions the number of years of required medical service based on the remoteness of the assignments to cities and towns. The minimum number of service is two years.

Health professionals commended the effort to relax the service terms, especially on the issue of multi-licensing, which enables health workers to acquire more than one permit to practice in more than one specialty in the medical field.

“I can now get an additional license for my degree in public health,” says Emebet Hailemariam, a nurse for almost three decades and currently employed at Gandhi Memorial Hospital.

Health professionals, working in fields such as nursing, health officer, midwifery, environmental health, dental surgeon, physiotherapist, psychiatrist nurse and optometrist, have been relieved by the Ministry from the mandatory medical service.

For the remaining five professions - medical doctor, laboratory technician, pharmacist, X-ray technician and anesthetist - the service remains in effect unless tuition fees are paid.

This applies to medical doctors that graduated from private universities as well, who are mandated to serve for two years or pay back 179,000 Br that covers their one-year paid internship in government hospitals.