Egypt Field Epidemiology Training Program

Program overview

FETP Egypt was the second field epidemiology training program to develop within the Eastern Mediterranean region. The advanced level (two-year) program began in 1993 in collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This program starts with an introductory or screening course that provides basic instruction in applied epidemiology and public health followed by seven modules covering the areas of interest.

The program has hosted 20 cohorts in which residents and graduates provide essential epidemiologic services to the country.

Most of the FETP graduates have continued their public health careers after graduation working as epidemiologists to serve the preventive sector of the Egyptian ministry of health and have filled leadership positions at central and governorate levels. A number of FETP graduates are working for the World Health Organization (WHO), African CDC, United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and other international non-governmental organizations.

The Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population launched the basic level FETP (the Public Health Empowerment Program in Basic Field Epidemiology, or PHEP-BFE) in July 2017. This program is a three-month in-service training which targets sanitarians, as they are the backbone of preventive medicine in Egypt.

Mentoring is successfully implemented to drive rich learning and improvement for both residents and mentors. 20 mentors have been assigned to guide FETP/PHEP-BFE residents to implement the needed field investigations and studies.

The program recently developed a full web-based database of all FETP residents and mentors. This application will facilitate tracking the progress of residents during their training years.

Achievements

20 cohorts have been engaged with the program, which has 141 epidemiologists who graduated from the advanced level; 21 residents are completing their curriculum.

Two cohorts, comprising a total of 75 sanitarians, have graduated from the basic level of the program.

Over the last three years, the program has succeeded in expanding FETP to the governorate level through enrollment of trainees from different governorates as follows in order to build epidemiologic preparedness and response capacity at the governorate levels:

  • Two residents from governorates in cohort 18 (10.5%)
  • Eight residents in cohort 19 (38%)
  • 10 residents in cohort 20 (43.5%)

Program residents and graduates have participated in public health events nationally (e.g., malaria outbreak, measles outbreak, suspected cases of Rift Valley and dengue fevers). They have also participated in international public health events (e.g., Ebola outbreak in Liberia and cholera outbreak in Somalia in 2017).

Program residents and graduates have participated in other public health activities, including:

  • Preparedness plan for Ebola Virus Disease in 2014
  • National Polio campaign
  • Haji survey for estimating influenza prevalence
  • Detection of corona infections among Egyptian pilgrims yearly
  • National Hepatitis survey campaign

A number of residents presented the results of their research projects at regional and international conferences including the Epedemic Inelligence Service (EIS), Training Programs in Epidemiology and Public Health Interventions Network (TEPHINET), Eastern Mediterranean Public Health Network (EMPHNET), Mediterranean Programme for Intervention Epidemiology Training (MediPIET) and Eastern Mediterranean Acute Respiratory Infection Surveillance (EMARIS) conferences. In the past five years, about 60 of their abstracts were accepted as oral and poster presentations.