St. Paul's Hospital Millennium Medical College

St. Paul’s Hospital Millennium Medical College is a public hospital and medical teaching college located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Its mission is to provide comprehensive healthcare services, teach high quality medical education and meet the needs of the communities it serves through its advanced and affordable healthcare system.

On October 1, 2017, St. Paul’s and HCP established a partnership and started an initiative to strengthen the provision of eye care services in Ethiopia for those suffering from preventable and treatable blindness. This initiative supports expanding St. Paul’s outreach to underserved members of its neighboring communities, providing ophthalmic supplies and equipment to St. Paul’s and providing local capacity building, including training for ophthalmologists and eye health professionals at St. Paul’s.

One year after this partnership was established, HCP sat down with newly minted St. Paul’s Department of Ophthalmology Head, Dr. Girum Gebreal to discuss their progress.

“This is only my third week heading the ophthalmology department, but I have witnessed the activities done through this partnership with HCP. Since we started working with HCP formally we can see some developments in terms of quality and training that have been very beneficial. We have had our first specialists trained with HCP’s support. This is a big move for us (St. Paul’s) because if we can’t train our own staff the hospital is forced to hire specialists. Another thing is the outreach; so far we’ve done just one, but are planning for much more in the coming year. The first week of November we are going to the Afar region and are expecting a high volume of surgeries.

I had a vision when I joined the department for St. Paul’s to be one of the centers of excellence in terms of patient care, training and research in Ethiopia. We are thinking about expanding services and hoping to start more fellowships and trainings in the U.S. The real goal though is to train all of our ophthalmic people in our country. I believe we can do it and HCP’s support will help get us there.”

Through our partnering institutions we are able to strengthen the eye care systems within the countries we work, following the successful model our flagship partner, the Tilganga Institute of Ophthalmology. St. Paul’s is one of five HCP supported teaching hospitals and a part of our residency coordinator program. In addition to HCP, St. Paul’s partners with the University of Michigan’s W.K. Kellogg Eye Center.