Dr Vincent Martin issued Letters of Appreciation to acknowledge all Chinese trainers' engagement in the CFETPV

The CFETPV has made significant progress since it was launched in 2010, by training more than 140 epidemiologists in government agencies all over China. However, it is a quite small number comparing with half million government veterinary staff in the country. There is still a strong need of veterinary epidemiology capacity building at various levels. In order to make the program sustainable, Chinese trainer team has been established since the 2nd cohort of the CFETPV in 2012. Most members were distinguished graduates from the China and regional FETPV.

Chinese trainers are playing an important role and are becoming the backbone of the program. Their roles in teaching and mentoring has gradually increased. While the 1^st cohort of the CFETPV was fully delivered by international trainers in English. About 40% of training courses were delivered by the Chinese trainers for the third cohort. Since the team was established, each trainee has one ese trainer to provide mentoring to their field works. It improves the quality of the program and fully applies ‘learning by doing’ approach. Although all Chinese trainers are part-time and have heavy workloads as they are key staff of their institutes, they still actively engage in the program and facilitate the development of veterinary epidemiology in China. They delivered trainings for local veterinarians to support epidemiology capacity development in provinces, and engaged in trainings for university academics to facilitate veterinary epidemiology education in China. In addition, Chinese trainers started to develop training materials in Chinese, curricula and case studies with local context which will have long-term impacts to strengthen China’s capacity in veterinary epidemiology. In light of the enthusiastic participation of the Chinese trainers, Dr Vincent Martin, the FAO Representative issued a Letter of Appreciation to all Chinese trainers and their institutes, to thank them for their active engagement in the CFETPV.

Developing Chinese trainers’ competences and skills was identified as one of the priorities of the CFETPV, which would assist in establishing the long-term sustainability of the program and epidemiology capacity development in China. A tailored capacity development program was launched. Training of trainers (ToT) workshops have been conducted every year to help them to enhance their technical knowledge and coaching skills. Besides of ToT workshops, the program also support them to have international exchange programs and short-term overseas fellowship.

The establishment and development of Chinese trainer team showed the strong commitments of the Chinese government on veterinary epidemiology capacity development. It plans to recruit more Chinese trainers in the 4^th cohort and engage the team more in the epidemiology applications in the field.