Public Health Wales receives funding to transform health protection services in Wales
Published: 2 March 2021
Public Health Wales has received agreement from the Welsh Government to strengthen our integrated health protection service and enable the organisation to deliver a world class service with the funding of over 100 new posts.
The posts – 110 WTE – are additional health protection specialist posts to improve capacity and resilience in Public Health Wales. Recruitment is already underway for some of the posts deemed critical and needed before the Welsh Government made their decision on funding.
In a joint letter to Tracey Cooper, Andrew Goodall, Chief Executive of NHS Wales and Dr Frank Atherton, CMO for Wales confirmed the funding and recognised the major challenges Public Health Wales has been facing when responding to the pandemic. They outlined their “immense gratitude to all Public Health Wales staff for their continued efforts in a more challenging period we could ever have anticipated”.
Andrew Jones, Interim Executive Director of Public Health Services said:
“It is excellent news that the Welsh Government has recognised the extremely valuable work this organisation has done in responding to the pandemic over a sustained period of time and I extend my thanks to you all as well.
“I’m also really pleased that they share our ambition to build on the immense talent we already have to create a work class integrated health protection service for Wales through the provision of additional funding. We already lead the way in many areas of our service and the additional investment will help us respond to health protection issues in a sustained way.
“My thanks to the team who worked incredibly hard to pull together a very detailed business case for Welsh Government and will be supporting on the recruitment moving forward.”
Next steps
The approval letter outlines that the further investment is for 110 WTE prioritised posts which fulfil the most urgent functions such as infection prevention and management, surveillance and field epidemiology.
Some critical posts have already been filled and post holders will be starting as soon as possible. A detailed recruitment plan for the remaining posts is now being developed.
What does this mean for mobilised staff?
The mobilisation of staff to support the health protection response is set to continue until 31 May and further information is available here: