ISAVET Trainees analyzing samples during the training.

In an effort to build the field epidemiology capacity of the veterinary workforce in Uganda, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, together with the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries launched the fourth cohort of front-line In-Service Applied Veterinary Epidemiology Training (ISAVET) programme.

ISAVET is a four-month training programme consisting of four weeks of formal classroom training followed by three months of field attachment and project at work station. Thirty (30) trainees – drawn from both private and public sectors, including veterinarians and paraveterinary professionals from 25 districts concluded a one-month full-time class training and are currently undertaking three months of field-based training. Participants were drawn on the basis of geographical location, to cater for diverse grass root requirements, as well as gender considerations and ability to fulfill professional registration requirements with Uganda Veterinary Board (UVB).

The ISAVET program uses applied, hands-on, in-service training to build a cadre of skilled front-line veterinarians who can conduct effective surveillance, and outbreak response under a One Health approach that considers human, animal and environmental health as a closely related.

In Uganda, the training was first piloted in 2018, followed by three successful training cohorts in 2020, 2021 and 2022, bringing the total animal health workforce that has undergone the coveted ISAVET training to 117. The ISAVET program was established to strengthen the field epidemiology capacity within the animal health sector, and to address existing gaps in the animal health workforce identified by various international assessments, including the Joint External Evaluation (JEE), Surveillance Evaluation Tool (SET), and the OIE – Performance of Veterinary Service (PVS) pathway for Uganda.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the fourth cohort training at the Civil Service College, Jinja, the Commissioner for Animal Health; Dr Rose Ademun noted that the programme has become a flagship for Uganda because of its importance in building a comprehensive and integrated strategy and policies for the development of veterinary human resources, and helping Uganda strengthen national capacities for timely and effective preparedness, detection, and response to animal and human health threats. “ISAVET is proving to be critical in availing skilled One Health workforce to enable us to strengthen our capacity to prepare for the detection and response to emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, including zoonotic and transboundary animal diseases,” Dr Ademun said.

Dr Rose pledged the Government of Uganda’s commitment and support to the program, stating that the Ministry of Agriculture will continue to support the districts to ensure that disease outbreaks are reported and controlled timely and efficiently. She also expressed her gratitude to FAO and USAID for their support of the development of the livestock sector and urged the trainees to pay particular attention to details and effectively apply the lessons learned.

During this training, participants were trained on a range of competencies and skills, including; understanding animal health and public health surveillance systems, the importance of reporting animal diseases and the methods to effectively do so, conducting data quality audits to assess the reliability of surveillance data and providing feedback to stakeholders, summarizing surveillance data using descriptive epidemiology, applying critical thinking in sharing and disseminating health information, practising proper biosafety and biosecurity methods, conducting outbreak and health event investigations, communicating effectively with both technical and non-technical audiences, among others.

The FAO’s Emergency Center for Transboundary Animal Diseases (ECTAD) Country Team Leader Dr Willington Bessong underscored the importance of the animal workforce in detecting and responding to zoonotic diseases.
“The program is designed to highlight essential epidemiological outcomes based on field observation. The next three months are therefore very critical in determining your success as field-based epidemiology trainees,” he said, urging trainees to complete their field projects.

At the end of the one-month classroom training, trainees obtain partial graduation and undergo a mentor-matching session based on their field areas of study, to support them and oversee that they complete the four-month course. The partial graduands will in the next three months at their various place of work, with technical support from assigned mentors, trainers, and the ISAVET National Steering Committee, be obliged to successfully undertake and complete identified field research activities, and practice field disease investigation and reporting as pre-requisite for a final evaluation that will assess their suitability for final graduation.

FAO Uganda, through its Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Disease (ECTAD), ensures that the ISAVET training program bridges the important workforce gap in veterinary epidemiologists at all levels of the health pyramid. This fourth cohort of ISAVET trainees is expected to expand the network of epidemiologists in the fields of human and animal health to ensure surveillance and control of diseases in the framework of a One Health approach.

Through ISAVET, MAAIF is directly involved in the implementation of the International Health Regulations (2005) and strengthening the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) Performance of Veterinary Services (PVS) Pathway through more active disease surveillance and control, which increases the sustainability of the program. The number of trained veterinary epidemiologists in the country has increased. Before the inception and roll-out of ISAVET, MAAIF had less than five trained Field Epidemiologists.