United States Government, in partnership with Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI), and the World Health Organization celebrated the graduation of 110 health professionals from the Ethiopian Federal Police Commission and Ministry of National Defense, following their completion of the Frontline Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP), on April 18, 2019.
The program is the outcome of cooperative support from the funding by Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and with technical support by U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), EPHI and WHO.
Dr. Christine Ross, CDC Ethiopia Country Director, acknowledged the work of the graduates for their continuous services in public health and how this program will allow them to better respond to diseases and events of public health importance or international concern among Ethiopian districts.
Dr. Christine Ross said, “your impact is by no means limited to your Ethiopian National Defense Force and Federal Police medical facilities and bases, or to your region, or even your country; now the whole world will have an extra 112 pairs of eyes to better monitor and assess the quality of public health surveillance–and ultimately make the world safer than yesterday.”
The effort ellaborated collaboration all over the Ethiopian government including the Ministry of National Defense, Ministry of Peace and Ministry of Health.
The involvement of these Ministries will help to make better the information-sharing and collaboration in the identification of and response to public health warnings, building a truly unsegregated health response capacity in Ethiopia for the first time.
The FETP was launched with technical and financial support from CDC and WHO.
It is an protuberance of earlier investments by CDC to develop highly skilled public health professionals at the Ethiopian Ministry of Health and regional health bureaus, modeled on CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service.
It leverages experience from previous Ebola outbreaks on the continent, underlined the importance of training working-level health professionals in frontline responses for effective epidemic control.
Participants in FETP also benefitted from DTRA’ Biological Threat Reduction Program (BTRP), which pays attention on Biosafety, Biosecurity and Biosurveillance.
