Coll 54/2 'Middle East (Official) Committee: Working Party' [‎32r] (63/642)

dispensaries consist of no more than a hut, sometimes without
drugs, attended by a badly trained dresser, Furthermore, the
alleged maximum number of beds in each hospital is woefully
inadequate, and there is seldom sufficient equipment to maintain
even half this number 0 With these limitations it is not surpris
ing that the ordinary citizen has little chance of being admitted
to a hospital. But ? even should accommodation be available, the
poor, particularly in Addis Ababa are debarred from all the State-
run hospitals by their inability to pay the official fees, and
well over 95% of the Ethiopian population are desperately poor#
The hospitals ? with very few exceptions, are State-run and all
of them are staffed by foreign doctors, there being no qualified
Ethiopian doctors, midwives or nurses. There are no qualified
health inspectors-
4• Edu catio n
It would be impossible, and anyway unnecessary to attempt an
estimate of literacy for the whole country, EducaHon, on the
most generous interpretation of the term , was started in Ethiopia
only about forty years ago. Relatively good progress was made
from 1925 ^9350 The Italians, while doing little to educate
the Ethiopian population, constructed numbers of schools to serve
the requirements of the Europeans and these buildings have proved
extremely useful to the Ethiopians in all the large towns#
Furthermore, with a widely scattered and agricultural population,
the physical difficulties of introducing an educational
system are considerable c At the same time, there is little
popular desire to achieve literacy, an ability to read and write
being quite unnecessary to the daily life of the peasant farmer#
Church schools have, indeed, functioned throughout the country
from time immemorial, but at the best they do no more than
inculcate the dcvma and a few chants of what is in fact an
extremely dim and obsrvrantist form of the Christian religion#
All schools, except those of a few Missionary Societies
and the General Wingate School in Addis Ababa, are run by the
Government and education is free. They are mostly elementary#
Already there are sufficient of them in the capital and the
large provincial towns, and their numbers are increasing in
the province So Some, staffed by Europeans and Indians, give a
good education, principally the Tafari Makonnen School and the
Medhane Alem School in Addis Ababa, two at Harar, Two at Bessie
and one at Asba Tafario But many of the local schools in the
country districts, depending on young Ethiopian teachers, may
even fail to teach the puxuls how to read and write.
There are two secondary schools in Addis Ababa, the General
Wingate School and the Haile Selassie School, both of which were
founded by the British Council (the latter now being run by
Swedish teachers)# Their standard of education is good, and
both far had promising results in the London
Matriculation examination# Secondary educational sections are
being developed at some of the elementary schools in Addis Ababa
and Harar, In the capital there are also some technical schools
a fairly good Commercial School, a Theological School, and a
Teachers * Training School which has gone to the bad since the
British Council, v/ere obliged by a series of intrigues to abandon
their interest in it#
Since^ the war there has been an increasing demand from
pupils to oe educated, or to complete their education, abroad,
chiefly in the United Kingdom# At the present time there are
66 pupils in the United Kingdom, from the ages of 7 to 26# Others
have been sent to the U-SnA,, Switzerland and Beirut# The
/education