In the course of a mission to Ethiopia, Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Lapo Pistelli, accompanied by Director General for Development Cooperation Giampaolo Cantini, Ambassador of Italy to Addis Ababa Renzo Rosso and Director of the Local Technical Unit Fabio Melloni, made a visit today to the St. Luke Hospital of Wolisso, in the Oromia region. The facility, an example of excellence in the healthcare sector and a major point of reference for the entire region, is the fruit of a decade of cooperation between the NGO CUAMM (Doctors with Africa) and the Italian Development Cooperation, with the added participation of the prestigious Rita Levi-Montalcini Foundation.
A highly significant and winning example of Italo-Ethiopian cooperation, as well as of public/private partnership in the administration of a healthcare facility, the St. Luke Hospital was the beneficiary over the past year of a joint nursing and obstetrics training project that was financed by the Italian Development Cooperation and implemented by CUAMM and the Rita Levi-Montalcini Foundation, the main goal being improve healthcare conditions in the more remote areas.
Ethiopian Minister of State for Industry Ato Tadesse Haile and UNIDO representative in Ethiopia Jean Bagambanya Bakole were present that afternoon for the signing of an agreement on the second phase of the Technical Assistance Project for the Up-Grading of the Ethiopian Leather and Leather Products Industry, which is to be implemented by UNIDO over the next two years through a Cooperation contribution of ?750,000. The project is part of the new 3-year (2013-2015) Italy-Ethiopia Country Programme signed yesterday in Addis Ababa, the first phase of which received unanimous appreciation from the Ethiopian government and all the actors involved, and made it possible to sustain the leather sector by boosting the technical and managerial skills of the small and medium-sized enterprises of Ethiopia's Leather Industry Development Institute (LIDI).
