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The paper investigates the social construction of the “enemy” through the lens of youth marginalization and ethnic stigma in the context preceding the 2020 Tigray War in Ethiopia. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, mostly based in Tigray, the study argues that the dichotomy of “enemy/friend” is rooted in the social production of symbolic boundaries. This article aims to explore how historical narratives and political dynamics have been used to frame certain regional groups, particularly the Tigrayans, as the “enemy” leading up to the outbreak of the war. It also discusses how youth marginality and ethnic stigma may be intertwined in processes of “otherness”. The article highlights how the strategic use of symbolic boundaries can facilitate individual trajectories of both acceptance and avoidance of conflict and violence. Building on these premises, it examines how various social actors deploy such boundaries to navigate an uncertain political landscape. By examining the micro-level dynamics of social relations and the macro-level forces shaping ethnic nationalism, the study aims to provide a combined understanding of the socio-political factors underlying the recent conflict in Tigray. The findings contribute to the broader literature on the social construction of identity, ethnicity and youth marginality in highly conflictual contexts.

ABSTRACT Background The war in Tigray has caused significant damage to the region's healthcare facilities. This study aimed to assess the extent of the war's impact on healthcare facilities in the Eastern Tigray Zone. Methods A mixed research strategy was used, with both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Primary data were collected through questionnaires, interviews, focus group discussions, and observations, whereas secondary data were obtained from published and unpublished documents. Participants were selected using a simple random sampling method. The collected data were analyzed using a linear regression model to determine the statistical significance of the findings. Results The study found that the impact of the war on healthcare facilities was high to very high, with 97.9% of the damage attributed to the war. Of the 177 healthcare facilities in the Eastern Tigray Zone, 29 (16.4%) were severely affected, and 118 (66.66%) were totally damaged. This indicates that 83% of the health system in the region was damaged. The linear regression model showed that the war explained 55.8% of the observed health facility damage. Conclusions The damage to health facilities in the Eastern Tigray Zone has led to the complete collapse of the health system at the zone level. The urgent need for reconstruction and restoration of health facilities is highlighted to provide essential health services to the affected population. The government and concerned individuals must take immediate action to address this critical situation and help mitigate the negative impact of the war on the health of the people in Tigray.

On 2 November 2022, welcome news came from Pretoria, South Africa. After 10 days of negotiations, the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE) and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) signed a Cessation of Hostilities Agreement. This piece situates the importance of the war, and more importantly the agreement, within the longue durée of Ethiopian politics and highlights its importance as a turning point marking the end of the era of the dominance of the TPLF and the beginning of the end of ethno-nationalism's hegemonic centrality to national politics, including at the expense of the Ethiopian state.

This study examines gender disparities in food insecurity in war-affected rural Tigray, Ethiopia, focusing on the structural and socioeconomic factors that disproportionately affect female-headed households. Using non-linear Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition analysis, this study analyses data from 1,060 households surveyed in May and June 2024. The study found that 62.57% of the gender gap in food insecurity is explained by differences in resource endowments, such as livestock holdings, annual farm income, and dependency ratios. Armed conflict exacerbated food insecurity, increasing vulnerability by 58.39%, with women affected by displacement, loss of livelihood, and caregiving responsibilities. Furthermore, 26.43% of the gender gap remains unexplained, indicating deeper systemic inequalities. Livestock holdings accounted for 32.45% of the gender gap, whereas lower farm income accounted for 15.58%. Education played a significant role in reducing food insecurity, as female-headed households with secondary education face an 11.28% lower risk of food insecurity. Widowed female-headed households had a 14.32% higher likelihood of food insecurity. The findings underscore the necessity for gender-sensitive policies to address food insecurity, advocating for evidence-based interventions to improve access to education, livestock, and humanitarian aid. These measures are critical for reducing disparities and building resilience in conflict-affected regions.

We report hepatitis E virus (HEV) outbreaks among refugees from Ethiopia in Sudan during June 2021–February 2022. We identified 1,589 cases of acute jaundice syndrome and used PCR to confirm HEV infection in 64% of cases. Implementing vaccination, water, sanitation, and hygiene programs might reduce HEV outbreak risk.

Background Exposure to armed conflicts result in strongly adverse and often irreversible short- and long-term effects which may transmit across generations. Armed conflicts directly cause food insecurity and starvation by disruption and destruction of food systems, reduce farming populations, destroying infrastructure, reducing resilience, and increasing vulnerabilities, disruptions in access to market, increasing food price or making goods and services unavailable altogether. The objective of the present study was to determine the status of household food insecurity in the armed conflict affected communities of Tigray in terms of Access, Experience and Hunger scale. Method Community-based cross-sectional study was conducted to assess impact of armed conflict on household food insecurity among households with children with under one year. FHI 360 and FAO guidelines were used to quantify household food insecurity and Household hunger status. Results Three-fourth of the households had anxiety about food supply and eat undesired monotonous diet due to lack of resources. Households were obliged to eat few kinds of foods, eat smaller meals, eat foods they do not want to eat, or went a whole day without eating any food. Household food insecurity access, food insecurity experience, and hunger scales significantly increased by 43.3 (95% CI: 41.9–44.7), 41.9 (95% CI: 40.5–43.3) and 32.5 (95% CI: 31.0-33.9) percentage points from the prewar period. Conclusions Household food insecurity levels and household hunger status of the study communities was unacceptably high. The armed conflict has significant negative effect on food security in Tigray. It is recommended that the study communities need to be protected from the immediate and long-term consequences of conflict-induced household food insecurity.

Background Despite the benefits of Antiretroviral Therapy (ART), there is a growing concern of treatment failure. This study aimed to assess viral non suppression rate and factors associated with HIV viral non suppression among adolescents and adults on ART in Northern Ethiopia. Methods A retrospective cross sectional study was done on 19,525 study subjects. All the data in the database of Tigray Health Research Institute was exported to Microsoft excel 2010 and then data verification and filtration were done before exporting to STATA 14.0 for analysis. Generalized Estimating Equation (GEE) logistic regression was used for statistical modeling of viral non suppression. Results A total of 5153 (26.39%; 95%CI (25.77%, 27.02)) patients had no viral suppression despite being on ART. Being male (AOR = 1.27, 95% CI: 1.18, 1.37), 15–19 years of age (AOR = 4.86, 95%CI: 3.86, 6.12), patients from primary hospital (AOR = 1.26, 95%CI: 1.05, 1.52), WHO staging II (AOR = 1.31, 95%CI: 1.10, 1.54), poor ART adherence level (AOR = 2.56, 95%CI: 1.97, 3.33), fair ART adherence level (AOR = 1.61, 95%CI: 1.36, 1.90), baseline CD-4 count of < 200 cells/micro liter (AOR = 1.33, 95%CI: 1.14, 1.54), recent CD-4 count of < 200 cells/micro liter (AOR = 3.78, 95%CI: 3.34, 4.27), regimen types: 1c (AZT-3TC-NVP) (AOR = 1.32, 95%CI: 1.22, 1.44), 2 h (TDF-3TC-ATV/R) (AOR = 1.79, 95%CI: 1.27, 2.52) and declined immunological responses after ART initiation (AOR = 1.45, 95%CI: 1.30, 1.61) were significantly associated with viral non-suppression. Conclusions The virological non suppression was high which makes it less likely to achieve the third 90 UNAIDS target. Being male, patients with WHO staging II and poor ART adherence level were significantly associated with viral non suppression. Therefore, intensive adherence support and counseling should be provided. It is also a high time to determine the antiretroviral drugs resistance pattern given the fact that a large number of patients had virological non suppression.

Abstract The upsurge of TPLF led regime to power installed ethnic politics and deconstruction of Ethiopian history with corporate corruption, ultra-vires and pseudo-federalism. The misappropriations of national assets added with autocratic nature of the regime procreated erratic political oppositions and protests since the party set on to power. The political marginalization at intra-party level also created split, which brought state elites in Amhara and Oromia regions to support the acute popular protest. These political scenarios have compelled TPLF to abscond into Mekelle and the coming of reformist leaders to power in 2018. This paper thus aimed to uncover TPLF's political strategy in post 2018 Ethiopia by employing a qualitative case study with a secondary data obtained from Mass Media, commentaries and digitized outlets. The loss of key political positions and attachment of the regime's wrong deeds to TPLF has bugging its elites after the coming of the new premiership. As counter to the reformist leaders, TPLF undertook huge militarization, destabilization and proxies, inducing popular fear, supporting like-minded regional oppositions to propagandize sensitive political issues to regain its lost prestige. This power rivalry created political absurdism, where political decisions and policies of the reformists had continued to be officially banned by TPLF in a way that disastrously impacted the survival of the state. Thus, it is important to undertake political reconciliation to freeze the prevailing political deadlocks for the continuation of the polity.

Background Starting from the ancient time, the people of Ethiopia use medicinal plants as traditional medicine to heal different human and livestock ailments. This ethnobotanical study of medicinal plants was carried out in Ganta Afeshum District, Eastern Zone of Tigray, Northern Ethiopia, to identify medicinal plant species used by the local community to treat various human and livestock ailments. Methods A total of 78 informants (54 men and 24 women) were selected to collect ethnobotanical information from four study sites. Among the 78 informants, 20 key informants were selected purposefully; the other 58 informants were selected randomly by lottery method. Ethnobotanical data were collected using semi-structured interviews, field observations, guided field walks, and group discussions and were analyzed by preference ranking, paired comparison, direct matrix ranking, informant consensus factor, fidelity level (FL), use-value, independent samples t test, and Pearson correlation coefficients. Results A total of 173 medicinal plants were collected and identified that were distributed across 77 families and 156 genera. The family Fabaceae stood first by contributing 17 (9.8%) species followed by Lamiaceae and Solanaceae with 9 (5.2%) species each. Rhamnus prinoides was reported for the treatment of many of the described diseases. One hundred sixteen (67.1%) medicinal plant species were collected from natural vegetation, 34 (19.7) were from home gardens, 13 (7.5%) from farmland, and 10 (5.8%) were from natural vegetation and home gardens. The most widely used life form was herbs (69 species, 39.9%) followed by shrubs (58 species, 33.5%). The most commonly used part of the medicinal plants was the leaves followed by roots. The plants were prepared by grinding, powdering, squeezing, roasting, and burning and were administered through oral, dermal, nasal, anal, ocular, and vaginal, and on the surface of the teeth. The most commonly used applications were by drinking, smearing, eating, fumigation, and chewing. There was no difference between men and women informants, showing that the two sexes had similar knowledge in the use of traditional medicinal plants. Educational level and medicinal plant knowledge of informants were negatively correlated; whereas age and medicinal plant knowledge of informants were positively correlated. Conclusions Ganta Afeshum District is relatively rich in diversity of medicinal plant resources accompanied with a rich indigenous knowledge within the local communities to harvest and effectively use to prevent different human and livestock ailments. However, nowadays, deforestation, agricultural expansion, overgrazing, drought, and overexploitation are threatening these properties. Therefore, people of the study area should apply complementary conservation approaches (in situ and ex situ) for sustainable use of these resources and to prevent species extinction.

Background The prevalence of pregnancy-induced hypertension in Ethiopia ranges from 2.2 to 18.3%. However, so far little is known about the adverse perinatal outcomes of pregnancy-induced hypertension in Tigray regional state, Ethiopia. Therefore, the objective of this study was to assess the effect of pregnancy-induced hypertension on adverse perinatal outcomes in Tigray Regional State, Ethiopia. Methods a prospective cohort study was conducted on a total sample of 782 pregnant women attending antenatal care in hospitals of Tigray regional state, Ethiopia. Pregnant mothers diagnosed with PIH during the data collection period in the selected hospitals were included as exposed group and normotensive women were also enrolled as a control group. This study addresses women diagnosed with preeclampsia, eclampsia and gestational hypertension between 28 and 35 weeks of gestation. Data were collected using an interviewer-administered questionnaire and review of their medical records from February 2018, to February 2019. The adverse perinatal outcome event includes low birth weight, birth asphyxia, small for gestational age, preterm delivery, admission to neonatal intensive care unit and perinatal death. A modified Poisson regression model with robust standard errors was used to analyze relative risk. Results In this study, the overall incidence of adverse perinatal outcome was higher among women with pregnancy-induced hypertension than normotensive women (66.4% vs 22.2%). After adjusted for confounders women with pregnancy-induced hypertension were born babies with a higher risk of low birth weight (adjusted RR (95%CI) = 5.1(3.4,7.8)), birth asphyxia (aRR = 2.6(1.9,3.8)), small for gestational age (aRR = 3.3(2.3,4.6)), preterm delivery (aRR = 5.2(3.4,7.9)), stillbirth (aRR = 3.46(1.40,8.54)), admission to neonatal intensive care unit (aRR = 5.1(3.1,8.4)) and perinatal death (aRR = 3.6(1.8,7.4)) compared to normotensive pregnant women. Conclusions Higher incidences of adverse perinatal outcomes occurred among women pregnancy-induced hypertension in Tigray regional state, Ethiopia. Hence, health care providers should strengthen prevention, early diagnosis and prompt management of pregnancy-induced hypertension to reduce adverse perinatal outcomes of pregnancy-induced hypertension.