For the past several months, officials from the Ministry of Health and related organizations have been taking part in both basic and intermediate level epidemiology training. The participants were taught how to detect, analyze and control the spread of diseases that may pose a threat to the public. We spoke to Elena Perez, a Surveillance Officer at the Ministry of Health about the training and the importance of being able to detect dangerous diseases before they become threats...
Elena Perez - Surveillance Officer, Ministry of Health
"This is the completion of a, we have two cohorts graduating today. We have a cohort of the basic level and we have the intermediate level. For the basic cohort we're graduating 13 persons and for the intermediate we're graduating 5 persons. The basic level is a four month program, consisting of 80% in the fieldwork and 20% in the class. The focus of this program is out in the field, and the skills that are being thought in the classroom they have to apply in the field. The intermediate level is a 9 month program. Well it's 8 months of class and then they take 1 month to do the, what we call a plan survey which is what is presented today for example with the Zika prevalence."
"The idea is to build capacity within the students to be able to do some epidemiology work, types of surveillance, it's just the ability to detect any health condition of public health concern, to be able to look at the data that is coming out, that is being generated by the health system. Being able to analyze those and to come to some conclusions and make some recommendations for actions to be taken."
This training will help the Ministry and other healthcare stakeholders to properly identify and address the spread of diseases like Zika, dengue and even an illness like diarrhea.
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