Background Ethiopia plans to introduce social health insurance scheme for the formal sector. The scheme contribution will be collected as 3% of an employee’s monthly gross salary from both employee and employer. The scheme is expected to enhance access to health care, however, there is a concern that majority of civil servants were not willing to join and pay for it. Therefore, this study aims to assess willingness to join and pay for the newly proposed social health insurance among public servants in Arba Minch town, Southern Ethiopia.Methods Institution based, Cross-sectional study design was used among 713 randomly selected public servants in Arba Minch town. Multi-stage stratified random sampling technique was used to select participants. Data were collected by using a pre-tested, self-administered, structured questionnaire and then it was cleaned, coded, entered in to Epidata v.3.2 and exported to SPSS version 25 statistical package for analysis. Multivariate logistic regression was used to identify the predictors of willingness to join and pay for Social Health Insurance. Odds ratio less than 0.05 was used as cut-off point and 95% CI was used to report the finding. Open question contingent valuation method was also used to analyze willingness to pay for the scheme.Result Among the total of 692 respondents, 254 (36.7%) were willing to join the scheme. Out of those who were willing to join 171 (24.7%) respondents were willing to pay less than 1% and 41(5.9%) respondents were willing to pay 2–3% of their gross monthly salary. Interest to join the scheme was found to be affected by an awareness of the scheme, household size, regularly listening for health information and participation in the social network.Conclusion There is limited knowledge and awareness about the design of health issuance. Majority of the respondents were not willing to join and pay the proposed amount for the scheme. Provision of health information on mass media could be used as one strategy to enhance the understanding of health insurance and to change perception on social health insurance scheme.

Background A growing body of evidence demonstrating that individuals with Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) are more likely to have severe forms of COVID-19 and subsequent mortality. Hence, our study aimed to assess the knowledge of vulnerability and preventive practices towards COVID-19 among patients with hypertension or diabetes in Southern Ethiopia. Objective To assess the knowledge and preventive practices towards COVID-19 among patients with hypertension or diabetes mellitus in three zones of Southern Ethiopia, 2020. Methods A community-based cross-sectional study design was used with a multi-stage random sampling technique to select 682 patients with hypertension or diabetes mellitus from 10th -17th July 2020 at the three zones of Southern Ethiopia. Logistic regression analysis with a 95% confidence interval was fitted to identify independent predictors of knowledge and preventive practices towards COVID-19. The adjusted odds ratio (AOR) was used to determine the magnitude of the association between the outcome and independent variables. P-value <0.05 is considered statistically significant. Results The Multi-dimensional knowledge (MDK) analysis of COVID-19 revealed that 63% of study subjects had good knowledge about COVID-19. The overall preventive practice towards COVID -19 was 26.4%. Monthly income (AOR = 1.42; 95% CI: 1.04, 1.94) significantly predicted knowledge towards COVID-19. Ninety-five percent of the study subjects knew that the COVID-19 virus spreads via respiratory droplets of infected individuals. One hundred and ten (16.2%) of study subjects correctly responded to the questions that state whether people with the COVID-19 virus who do not have a fever can infect the other. Knowledge about COVID-19 (AOR = 1.47; 95% CI: 1.03, 2.1) became the independent predictor of preventive practice. Conclusions In this study, the knowledge of the respondents towards the COVID-19 pandemic was good. But the preventive practice was very low. There was a significant gap between knowledge and preventive practices towards the COVID-19 pandemic among the study subjects. Monthly income was significantly associated with knowledge of COVID-19. Knowledge of COVID-19 was found to be an independent predictor of preventive practice towards COVID-19. Community mobilization and improving COVID-19- related knowledge and practice are urgently recommended for those patients with hypertension or diabetes mellitus.

Background Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection remains the leading cause of morbidity and mortality throughout the world. Antiretroviral therapy has significantly reduced mortality and improved the life expectancy of HIV-infected patients. WHO developed the "universal test and treat" (UTT) program as a strategy for HIV elimination. Universal "test and treat approach" (UTT) is a program that commends for all populations those diagnosed HIV positive receive early treatment not considering their CD4 count and WHO clinical stage. UTT program was implemented a seven-year. Yet, the effect of this program in terms of patient status was not assessed about the current and previous( CD4 and WHO clinical) approach. Methods Institution-based retrospective cohort study was conducted at Public hospitals in Southern Ethiopia with a total of 802 randomly selected records of ART enrolled adults from March 1, 2013, to February 31, 2020. Data were extracted by using a standardized checklist by trained health professionals, then it was cleaned, entered by epidata version 4.2, and analyzed by STATA version 14. The Cox model was used to estimate survival differences across different study variables. Results A total of 790 patients were followed for 1490.8 person-year (PY) of observation. The overall incidence density rate (IDR) of death in the cohort was 3 per-100-PY. The incidence of death was significantly higher in the CD4-based and WHO stage program than the UTT program. The death among CD4-based and WHO stage programs were 3.7 times higher than the UTT program. The log-rank test and Kaplan–Meier survival curve indicated patients enrolled in the UTT program survived longer than patients enrolled in the CD4-based and WHO clinical stage program (log-rank X2 test = 17.6 p-value = 0.001). WHO clinical stage, functional status, Program of ART, New opportunistic infection, Adherence to ART drugs, and Initiation of IPT were predicted mortality from HIV infection. Conclusion Mortality was significantly reduced in the universal test and treat program. Hence, intervention to further reduce deaths has to focus on early initiation of treatment and strengthening universal test and treat programs.