The Supervisor-General of the Field Epidemiology Training Program, affiliated to the MOH Agency for Public Health, Dr. Raeda Noah, underscored that the program is one of the most important programs on which the ministry relays to provide field training for the national health manpower in the field of epidemiology, and identify the proper ways to combat it.
She proclaimed that, "with its technical competencies and students, the program supports other executive departments affiliated to the MOH's Agency for Public Health by means of developing different preventive activities; most notably, the Hajj preventive medicine program and its various fields, particularly the epidemiological surveillance of infectious diseases within the precautions taken to contain them and curb their outbreak. In addition, the program supports directing the preventive activities and investigating the outbreaks such as food poisoning and epidemics."
"Along with the technical and advisory support to the preventive programs, the program carries out a number of epidemiological studies every year during Hajj season, discussing the topics of interest, and then drafting the proper studies are prepared according to the scientific research standards," she added.
According to the international epidemics indicators, the epidemiology studies cover human behaviors related to the transmission and spread of diseases; identify the health risk factors in the largest human gathering event worldwide, and hence develop and upgrade the preventive work. These studies are carried out by the program employees under the direct management of the program supervisors at King Saud University and experts of the international centers, such as the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the World Health Organization (WHO).
Further, Dr. Raeda noted that though the program focuses on the field training, it's basically an academic program carrying out its tasks under the supervision of King Saud University in Riyadh, and it has direct technical and advisory relation with the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.
It's noteworthy that a large number of the program graduates are working in different positions during the Hajj season; some of them are now executive leaders of the Hajj preventive programs. Furthermore, the program benefits from the scientific work that is based on scientific guidelines and academic expertise of the supervisors, together with the executive and field work with the colleagues in the concerned departments to come up with preventive services which meet the ambitions of MOH with regard to having healthy and free of epidemics Hajj.