Achievements
The Egypt FETP launched its intermediate level and recruited the first intermediate cohort in April 2021. Now, the FETP uses all three levels of training: basic, intermediate, and advanced. The program graduated a total of 269 epidemiologists (166 from the advanced level and 103 from the basic level). As of December 2021, a total of 50 residents are enrolled in the program and are still completing their curriculum (nine in the Advanced level, 19 in the intermediate level, and 22 in the basic level). The program has a well-established mentorship structure formed of selected well-trained FETP alumni. New graduates are being trained to expand the mentorship structure to cover all tiers of the program.
Residents and graduates have a crucial role in the preparedness and response to public health threats, especially in the case of the current ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Very early in the pandemic, to delay the introduction of COVID-19 into Egypt, they had participated in returning stranded Egyptians from Wuhan and in monitoring suspected COVID-19 patients in the first quarantine hospital in Matrouh. They participate in all areas of public health response including crisis management, planning, enhancing surveillance systems and contact tracing, enhancing laboratory capacity, case and hospital management, clinical trials for COVID-19 vaccination, raising community awareness, quarantine and entry points. In addition, they are involved in all national activities such as implementing a COVID-19 national sero-prevalence survey in Egypt, national polio vaccination campaigns, and conducting surveillance at sports mass gatherings events, international conferences and festivals.
Residents and graduates participate annually in regional and international conferences. In 2021, 17 abstracts of their research projects were accepted as oral and poster presentations. In addition, they published numerous papers in various high-ranked journals with eight papers being published in the last year (as of December 2021).
