Galley Proof 19/04/2019; 14:16 File: hab–1-hab190368.tex; BOKCTP/xhs p. 1 Human Antibodies -1 (2019) 1–9 1 DOI 10.3233/HAB-190368 IOS Press Emergency medical services in Ethiopia: Drivers, challenges and opportunities Ali Mohammad Mosadeghrad a , Addis Adera Gebru b,c,∗ , Ali Akbari Sari d and MIkiyas Amare Getu c a Department of Health Management and Economics, School of Public Health, Health Information Management Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran b Department of Health Management and Economics, School of Public Health, International Campus, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran c Department of Nursing, Faculty of Health Sciences, Woldia University, Woldia, Ethiopia d Department of Health Management and Economics, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran Abstract. BACKGROUND: Ethiopia has well established health care system but not have significant improvements on emergency medical services and have shortage of equally initiative among all regional states and city administration of Ethiopia. This study aimed to examine the drivers, challenges, and opportunities of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and to identify new evidence for future policy making in Ethiopia. METHOD: A narrative review of the literature related to EMS was undertaken to describe the drivers, challenges, and oppor- tunities for EMS in Ethiopia from July, 2000 to September, 2018. The search was done from four relevant electronic databases: MEDLINE, Science Directs, Scopus and PubMed by using Google Scholar and Google with key search words used mainly as “Emergency Medical services in Ethiopia”. The inclusion criteria were an original study or review studies involving Emergency Medical Services in Ethiopia. Among the available papers, the relevant articles were selected while the irrelevant ones were excluded. RESULTS: There was lack of trained emergency medical providers and misdistribution of trained professionals, immaturity of the program, lack of partnership and stakeholders and lack of motivation towards Emergency medical services. Emergency medical services hamper significant problems similar to other African countries that required being addressed in Ethiopia context for achieving the program and in order to obtain intended outcomes for the country. CONCLUSION: A long-term discussion is needed to further improves services system in various health care facilities. An Emer- gency Medical services policy making and analysis framework is needed to make quality emergency medical care at Emergency department in hospitals and outside the hospitals. Keywords: Emergency medical services, challenges, opportunities, Ethiopia 1. Introduction 1 Emergency medical services provides a vital bene- 2 fits to the community around the world nations. Hence, 3 * Corresponding author: Addis Adera Gebru, Lecturer at De- partment of Nursing, Faculty of Health sciences Woldia Univer- sity, Ethiopia. Tel.: +25 19 8483 1393; E-mail: addisaderagebru@ gmail.com. it is a system which provides urgent emergency med- 4 ical care in response to individual and mass health 5 and health related emergencies. For instance, most 6 of motor vehicle crashes and other types of injuries 7 related to intentional and unintentional accidents are 8 commonly registered [1]. Evidence shown that emer- 9 gency medicine is still youngest discipline globally. 10 Moreover, the program is immatured in the developing 11 countries [2]. 12 According to world health organization Global bur- 13 ISSN 1093-2607/19/$35.00 c  2019 – IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved corrected proof version