The Refugees Proclamation recognizes refugees’ access to health care. Under Article 25, it provides that ‘every recognized refugee and asylum seeker shall have access to available health services in Ethiopia’. Refugees’ and asylum-seekers’ access to health care services in Ethiopia is not subject to any condition in the sense that the standard of treatment is not the most favored foreigners. Instead, refugees are accorded the same rights as Ethiopian citizens for purpose of access to health care services. 

Mental health is one of the top priorities in HSTP-II. Mental health promotion, prevention, and management of common mental health problems such as depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia will be addressed through such interventions as advocacy, social mobilization, BCC, strengthening social support, capacity building, and expansion of access to medication, psychosocial interventions, and rehabilitation.

Mental Health Major strategic initiatives of the HSTP-II, among other things, provide to facilitate the development of mental health legislation to protect the rights of people with mental health conditions, to strengthen integration and coordination of mental health care implementation and scale up at each level of the health system, and to ensure availability of mental health services to vulnerable groups or special populations.