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ENTRANT: East and Southern African Consortium for Outbreak Epidemiology Training

Coordinator: Dr Emily Webb, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) – United Kingdom
Consortium partners: National Health Laboratory (NHL) (Botswana), ZAMBART Project Limited, Haramaya University (HU)
Country of Fellow: Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia
Grant number: CSA2020E-3135

East and Southern African countries are susceptible to disease outbreaks, and vulnerable to pandemics due to constrained health systems. National response task forces have limited skilled epidemiological capacity to prevent and respond to outbreaks and public health emergencies. The ENTRANT project aims to promote the development of a critical mass of epidemiologists to work with National Public Health Institutes and Ministries of Health to improve this response.

The fellowship scheme will educate and mentor 15 high-calibre African epidemiologists working in the public health sector in East and Southern Africa, building on a proven model through which 24 African medical statisticians we have been trained at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) since 2003.

This will be achieved through three specific objectives:

1. To establish a cohort of epidemiology training fellows from East and Southern Africa
A steering committee will be established composed of epidemiologists and public health practitioners from a consortium of institutional partners relevant to outbreak response in Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and the United Kingdom. The steering committee will administer a competitive, rigorous, gender-equitable and transparent application process to identify suitable early- to mid-career public health professionals for entry into the fellowship scheme.

2. To provide fellows with world-leading Masters-level training in Epidemiology
LSHTM has agreed a full fee waiver for fellows on their flagship MSc in Epidemiology. Fellows will select modules relevant to their interests, for example on epidemiology and control of communicable diseases, and modelling and dynamics of infectious diseases, and conduct a three-month research project in their home country. They will undertake multi-disciplinary learning specifically on pandemics, through an online LSHTM short course led by members of the UK Public Health Rapid Support Team, who have international expertise in operational outbreak response and research.

3. To mentor fellows throughout and following completion of the MSc programme, and to produce a long-term mutually-supporting network of outbreak and pandemic control practitioners
Each fellow will be matched to two mentors, to guide them whilst they undertake the MSc Epidemiology, the short course on pandemics, a three-month MSc research project in their home country and dissemination of project results to in-country colleagues and collaborators. The steering committee will facilitate regular meetings, networking events and online discussion fora, and links with complementary initiatives. Dissemination activities will be conducted to encourage cascading of knowledge to wider networks, enabling longer-term sustainability of the programme.