New disease detectives ready for surveillance

Islamabad: More than 30 health officials from Gilgit-Baltistan, FATA, AJK, and the National Institute of Health (NIH) successfully completed a from a three-month frontline course for public sector health professionals, which concluded at NIH here on Friday.

Organised by NIH in the collaboration with the Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training Programme (FELTP), this 7th cohort frontline course was a closely supervised, on-job competency-based training that addressed the critical skills needed to effectively conduct surveillance at the local level, focusing on improving disease detection, reporting, and feedback.

FELTP is a joint initiative of the Ministry of National Health Services, NIH, and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta, USA ,and other institutional partners. The objective of the programme is to strengthening the national capacity in operational epidemiology, disease surveillance and outbreak response.

Speaking on the occasion, the executive director of NIH Dr Aamer Ikram told participants that they are now linked to a global effort to ensure global health through IHR 2005.He further encouraged them to act as frontline force for disease surveillance and outbreak response in their respective areas.

Dr. Rana Jawad Asghar, US-CDC Resident Adviser of FELTP, thanked the Ministry of National Health Services and NIH for their efforts to strengthen the health sector by improving the quality of health intelligence.

“We can win the war against bacteria and viruses only if we deploy our best people on health intelligence gathering,” he stated. Dr Jamil Ansari, Chief of Division of Field Epidemiology and Surveillance, and Kamal Soomro NSTOP/FELTP, also congratulated new disease detectives to FELTP family. In the end, Dr. Aamer Ikram distributed certificates among participants.