Objectives of the training programme

The overall objective of training activities is to reach a critical mass of health professionals with common abilities (tools and methods) for public health surveillance in the Pacific. 

Training opportunities for health professionals were discussed during the Pacific Islands Meeting on Public Health Surveillance (Noumea, New Caledonia, December 1996). Discussions focused especially on training in field epidemiology and public health surveillance.
A regional workshop on Epi INFO and surveillance
in Noumea, New Caledonia.

The proposed alternative schemes for training in public health surveillance were the following:

1. Each country shall decide its training needs and the level of training;

2. The location of training is to be in-country for capacity building in the area for low-level staff. Higher-level workers may be trained in outside institutions, although it was felt that on-the-job training is crucial for the Pacific;

3. Training should be integrated with other courses provided by development and technical international agencies (e.g. SPC, UNICEF, WHO) in specialised areas such as ARI, CDD, EPI and diploma courses;

4. Any training options must be eventually sustainable locally (training of the trainers). The duration and level of training would be dependent on the type of training required and the time available to national officers.

Plans of actions

Below are important points to be mentioned in plans of actions:

1. Building local capacity is taken as the primary objective of training activities, starting from field level upwards.

2. To identify what resources are available in each country, to group and share these resources withing the region as it is the case for outbreak investigations.

3. Training courses will cover different levels of health services:

  1. field level should cover quality of data collection, understanding of indicators, diagnosis and case definition, and appropriate health responses. Ideally, this training should be provided by in-country or regional experts;
  2. middle level should be carried out in disease surveillance and response at university or by senior staff in the country. Training modules should be flexible to cover all levels, and could be adapted from existing modules;
  3. higher level workers should be undertaken through apprenticeship or local counterpart system in the case of epidemiologists.

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