ISLAMABAD, Feb 6: The National Institute of Health (NIH) and the Health Services Academy on Tuesday inaugurated a $5.3 million training programme, which the organisers claimed would turn the ministry of health employees into field epidemiologists and laboratory scientists.

Funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the field epidemiology and laboratory training programme has been designed and being implemented by international health specialists at the Centre for Disease Control (Atlanta) with the help of NIH, provincial health directorates and several other institutional partners.

The US is supporting the programme to strengthen Pakistan’s capacity to respond to existing and emerging disease threats, said USAID Pakistan’s mission director Jonathan Addleton.

He said addressing emerging infectious threats in Pakistan also protected the US and the rest of the world’s health and security.

“There had been a critical need to develop applied epidemiology and supportive laboratory capacity for health workers in Pakistan to enable them to respond to avian influenza and other epidemics,” said CDC resident adviser Dr Rana Jawad Akhtar.

Executive Director NIH Masood Anwar termed the programme an important step towards the development of Pakistan’s public health sector.

For the training course on “Surveillance and outbreak’ held on Tuesday, 25-37 officers were selected from the four provinces and the Northern Areas. During the training, they designed and conducted a short study and analysed and presented the results in a short time frame.

The course, taught by experts from Pakistan and abroad, sensitises the participants to bio-threat agents, respiratory infections like avian influenza and vector-borne diseases like dengue and hepatitis.