The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Uganda has passed-out a batch of 14 new field epidemiologists bringing to 93, the number of the much sought-after disease surveillance and detection experts in the country. Specialists attending the graduation ceremony raised a concern that there is a huge gap of such experts in Africa with some countries operating with only two or three epidemiologists affecting the rate at which they detect and intervene in disease outbreaks.
According to Dr Yonas Tegegn Woldermariam, Africa records at least two new outbreaks per week but the earlier these are detected impacts on how much countries eventually spend on countering them. Citing outbreaks such as the West African Ebola response that lasted more than two years and billions of dollars to end it, Uganda has been able to quickly end such epidemics because of the presence of this skillset that is quickly deployed whenever an alert is sent.
Dr Alex Ario the Program Director of the Uganda Public Health Fellowship Program (PHFP) says the program was designed using an events-based surveillance approach where they keep receiving all sorts of alerts which are quickly analyzed for source of outbreak and transmission patterns before eventually deploying swiftly to stop further transmission.
However while this post-graduate training program is held in high regard and ten to 15 specialists are being trained annually, experts are worried about its sustainability considering that it’s donor-funded by the American government. According to Ario, they had earlier hoped that the government would start funding this training which is estimated to cost up to a hundred thousand dollars per fellow per year.
He says the plan was to have the government fund part of the program. Responding to this concern, Dr Daniel Kyabayinze the Director of Public Health in the Ministry of Health said even without government funding, this programme can sustain itself even if the US government pulled out.
He notes that field epidemiologists are in very high demand and any grants written in this line will most likely be funded. Meanwhile, Woldermariam says the demand for field epidemiologists will only continue going high with the new spate of diseases coming with climate change.
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