AFENET

African Field Epidemiology Network (AFENET) has been supporting Ministries of
Health/Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI) to implement field epidemiology training
programs (FETPs) for public health workers at national and subnational levels of the health
systems. FETPs are field based trainings with participants spending 25% of the time in classroom and 75% in the field providing public health services while acquiring core competencies in field epidemiology. In order to address the need to improve field epidemiology capacity at all levels of the health system, US CDC developed a three – tiered pyramid model for FETP implementation.

At the base of the pyramid is the 3-months Frontline FETP that targets public health workers at the local level, the middle of the pyramid is the 9-months intermediate FETP for regional level health workers and at the peak is the 2-years Advanced FETP for national level public health managers.

Ethiopia has developed a Measles elimination strategy in line with the target set by the WHO
regional office, aiming to achieve Measles elimination by 2020. Though marked achievements in the reduction of the Measles disease burden, the incidence of Measles has remained high and above the targets set for Measles reduction by 2012 (<5 cases/1,000,000 population) and Measles elimination by 2020(<1 cases/1,000,000 population). As a continued effort, the country introduced the Measles second dose vaccination for children in the second year of life. Similarly, the country conducted several rounds of catch-up and follow-up measles vaccination campaigns at national and sub-national levels.