ECDC: on Air - Episode 79 - A. Genath & L. Adamíková - Learning In The Field: 7 Weeks In South Sudan

What does field epidemiology actually look like when you leave the desk and work on the ground?

To mark World Field Epidemiology Day, Antonia Genath and Linda Adamíková share their experience of a seven-week deployment to South Sudan, where they supported Ebola preparedness and surveillance activities alongside WHO, local health authorities and other partners.

They talk about working in a fragile and resource-constrained health system, identifying gaps in surveillance, improving data collection and analysis, supporting contact-tracing preparedness, and training colleagues in the use of Go.Data.

The deployment also took them from Juba to Yambio, close to the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where cross-border movement adds another layer of complexity to outbreak preparedness.

Linda and Antonia are fellows in the European Programme for Intervention Epidemiology Training (EPIET) and the German Postgraduate Training for Applied Epidemiology (PAE). During their two-year fellowships, they are based at Germany’s national public health institute, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), where they contribute to projects and routine activities in infectious disease epidemiology.

The deployment was organised and funded by the EU Health Task Force in collaboration with the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN), and thanks to the financial support from Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG ECHO) of the European Commission.