Achievements
As of 2020, 30 residents (24 doctors and six veterinarians) have graduated through the first five cohorts of FETPB’s advanced level training, and 169 doctors and veterinarians have completed its two-month FETP Frontline course in ten groups.
Fellows have conducted more than 100 outbreak investigations as lead investigators, which includes COVID-19, diarrhea, measles, Japanese encephalitis, swine flu, acute respiratory infection, anthrax, Nipah virus, influenza, chikungunya, and mass psychogenic illness. Fellows also conducted initial health assessments, vaccine coverage assessments, and diphtheria outbreak investigations among Forcibly Displaced Myanmar Nationals (FDMN) in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.
The graduates of the FETPB program are involved in strengthening the response to public health incidents in the country with enhanced scientific basis for program and policy decisions. They are helpful in strengthening the disease surveillance system with enhanced communication of epidemiologic information. The Bangladesh public health system is benefited by FETPB graduates with greater core capacity to meet surveillance and response requirements under the World Health Organization’s revised International Health Regulations (IHR, 2005). The fellows who graduated from the first three cohorts are also mentoring fellows from the fourth and fifth cohorts.
A total of 25 abstracts by FETPB trainees have been accepted to various international conferences, including at FETP International Night at the EIS Conference, as well as at TEPHINET global and regional conferences. From 2014 through 2016, four FETPB fellows were awarded TEPHINET non-communicable disease mini-grants.