China hands over state-of-art hospital to Ethiopia

ADDIS ABABA, Nov. 16 (Xinhua) -- China on Wednesday handed over Tirunesh-Beijing Ethio-China Friendship Hospital to Ethiopia in a ceremony held in the presence of Jiang Yaoping, Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce at Akaki area some 25 km south of Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia.

The state-of-art Hospital which has been named after Tirunesh Dibaba, an Ethiopian female athlete who clutched double gold medals at the Beijing Olympics in China in 2008, has been constructed with a capital of 80 million Chinese Yuan (about 12.7 million U.S. dollars) by the Chinese government to promote friendship between China and Ethiopia.

Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce Jiang Yaoping and Kebede Worku, Ethiopian State Minister of Health, signed the certificate for the handing over of the project in the presence of diplomats and government officials from the two sides.

Kebede said the hospital is a symbol of the strong, dynamic and blossoming partnership between the governments of Ethiopia and China. The state minister said the friendship between the two countries has gone from strength to strength over the years and, particularly over the last decade.

"I wish to take this opportunity to express our profound appreciation of the huge investments being made by the Chinese people and government in support of our accelerated development efforts in so many areas. In the health sector in particular, we are very grateful for exceptional commitment of Chinese partners in helping build up our human resources and capacities through the transfer of knowledge, skills and technologies which are helping accelerate our determined efforts to build up our health system and expand service delivery," said the state minister.