Abstract
The authors were invited to present in a session titled The role of FELTPs in laboratory-based surveillance at the African Society for Laboratory Medicine (ASLM) biennial conference in December 2014 in Cape Town, South Africa. This session focused on five questions: a) What is FELTP? b) What is the state of public health laboratory-based surveillance in Africa? c) Are FELTPs contributing to public health surveillance and response in Africa? d) What challenges are FELTPs facing in implementation? The following is a summary of the presentations and discussions.
Highlights
Pan African Medical Journal – ISSN: 1937- 8688 Published in partnership with the African Field Epidemiology Network (AFENET)
In 2004 the first Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training Program (FELTP) was piloted in Kenya and subsequently FELTPs were implemented in several African countries as a strategy to create a public health workforce that could holistically operate multidisease surveillance and response systems, principally the World Health Organization Africa Regional Office’s Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) system [1,2]
Global Health Security has become a serious issue: Ebola in West Africa has reminded the world once again of the need to sustainably invest in public health surveillance and response systems everywhere by highlighting surveillance and response gaps in Africa, and these gaps include the lack of a public health laboratory workforce [3]
Summary
Pan African Medical Journal – ISSN: 1937- 8688 (www.panafrican-med-journal.com) Published in partnership with the African Field Epidemiology Network (AFENET). (www.afenet.net).
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