Background
The 2014/15 Ebola outbreak in West Africa revealed the weakness of the public health systems in the three most affected countries: Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. These inherent weaknesses led to delayed detection and response to the Ebola Virus Disease in these countries, leaving over 11,000 people dead. During this crisis, Sierra Leone faced a shortage of trained public health professionals capable of effectively managing disease surveillance and addressing emergencies. The absence of a skilled field epidemiological workforce significantly hindered timely detection and response. This situation underscored the urgent need for a well-trained cadre of public health professionals in Sierra Leone to enable prompt identification and effective responses to health threats.
As part of the post-Ebola recovery efforts to enhance public health systems, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in collaboration with its partners, mainly the African Field Epidemiology Network (AFENET), supported the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health. Through this partnership, Sierra Leone established the Frontline Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP) in June 2016, a three-month in-service training program, followed by the Intermediate FETP, a nine-month program in 2017.
The FETP is a competency-based applied epidemiology training program recognized by the World Health Organization as an effective global strategy for building a public health workforce. Countries are required to establish FETP to implement the International Health Regulations (IHR) 2005 core capacities. This is assessed through the Joint External Evaluations (JEE), which are indicated in the human resource technical area, particularly in the D3.3 indicators of the JEE.
The program was established in Sierra Leone to enhance the capacity of the public health workforce to detect disease threats and respond effectively. Trainees spend approximately 25% of their time in classroom training and 75% in the field. This hands-on approach focuses on developing core competencies, including investigating disease outbreaks, responding to public health emergencies, improving disease surveillance, and designing and implementing epidemiological studies and surveys.
As of October 2024, 2017, Sierra Leone has successfully implemented seven cohorts of the FETP Intermediate level. To date, 103 public healthcare workers from various government institutions, mainly from the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Agriculture (Animal production unit), two from the Ministry of Defense, and one from the Environmental Protection Agency, have been trained on the FETP-Intermediate course. Above half of the graduates, 47(52%), are working at the National level, and 47(48 %) are at the District level. Similarly, a toral of 317 public health professionals have been trained in 16 cohorts of the FETP-Frontline.