Tarekegn Abate Biru

Tarekegn Abate Biru has more than 25 years of experience working in the Ethiopian health, finance, and economic development sectors. He has held senior positions on USAID projects and in government.

As a health care financing expert, Biru has provided technical support in planning, implementing, and assessing the implementation of health care financing reforms throughout Ethiopia. This includes training and supportive supervision to strengthen the capacity of decision-makers and front-line implementers at all levels of the health system.

Biru is the Senior Health Finance and Governance Advisor and Abt Global lead representative on the USAID Transform: Primary Health Care project, which is led by Pathfinder International. His work includes designing and providing high-level technical support to strengthen health care financing implementation and public financial management in districts and ensuring coordination with health and finance sector authorities and key partners.

To date, Biru and his team of 22 Abt staff have:

• Strengthened financial resource retention, allocation, and use practices at more than 300 health facilities, which helped ensure that more revenue is generated and used to improve the quality of health services.
• Improved public financial management practices of more than 1,000 district-level health facility and health and finance office staff.
• Contributed to more than tripling the geographic coverage of community-based health insurance in project intervention areas.

Biru was previously the Senior Health Care Financing Specialist on the USAID Health Sector Finance Reform/Health Finance and Governance project implemented by Abt, where he provided training and technical assistance that strengthened the capacity of key government counterparts across the health system to implement health care financing reforms. He was also engaged in developing the legal frameworks that underpin reform implementation.

Previously, Biru held senior positions in the Addis Ababa City Administration Bureau of Finance and Economic Development. As a senior planning, budgeting, and monitoring and evaluation officer, he led a team that developed the city’s strategic plans. As a leader for socio-economic planning, he oversaw budgeting, monitoring and evaluation, and research on socio-economic challenges in Addis Ababa.

Expertise

• Health care financing
• Public financial management
• Strategic planning

Key Projects

• USAID Transform: Primary Health Care Project
• USAID Health Sector Financing Reform/Health Finance and Governance Project

Publications

• Abera AF, Desale AY, Argaw MD3, Desta BF, Tsegaye ZT, Mavundla TR, Birhanu N, Yasin T, Muktar SA, Abera WS, Frew AH, Mitiku AD, Biru TA, Haile TT, Assefa LN, Badacho AS, Ayele AA, Yesuf S., (April 24, 2020). Satisfaction with Primary Health Care services between insured and non-insured patients under community-based health insurance scheme. A comparative cross-sectional facility-based study in northeast Ethiopia. Family Medicine and Medical Science Research. Fam Med Med Sci Res, Vol.9 Iss.1 No:245. OPEN ACCESS Freely available online.
• Tefera BB, Kibret MA, Molla YB, Kassie G, Hailemichael A, Abate T, et al. (August 19, 2021. The interaction of healthcare service quality and community-based health insurance in Ethiopia. PLoS ONE 16(8): e0256132. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256132

Countries Served In

• Ethiopia