Building a public health workforce in Nigeria through experiential training

A competently trained public health workforce that can operate multi-disease surveillance and response systems is required for timely detection and response to public health emergencies. The backbone of any disease control is a robust surveillance system that is interlinked with timely quality response. The traditional approaches of training health care workers particularly public health workers have emphasized knowledge acquisition without commensurate competency acquisition ; experiential training on the other hand has been successful in creating and sustaining a skilled workforce. We describe the collaborative efforts of multiple agencies in building a public health workforce in Nigeria through experiential training approach.With only six years of implementation and a newly developed 5 year strategic plan the Nigeria Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training Program has shown that it can surmount its initial start-up challenges and play its rightful role in public health system strengthening.