In 2024, ECDC conducted a survey on public health workforce capacity in the field of prevention and control of infectious diseases in the EU/EEA. This was in response to requests from several European Member States to help assess existing workforce capacity and identify gaps and additional investments needed. The survey was designed for this purpose, as well as to support countries in taking the first steps to describe the size and composition of their existing public health workforce capacity, and to better understand issues related to recruiting and retaining that workforce. The survey had a good response rate (70% = 21 countries) and provided some valuable insights that can inform future capacity-building approaches. However, due to the diversity of health system structures and governance systems across countries, it was challenging to obtain comparable data. In most respondent countries, a strategic document, mechanism, or legal instrument for workforce planning and development in public health or specifically in infectious disease prevention and control does not exist. The public health workforce is distributed across different organisations, the majority is based within the ministry responsible for health and the national public health institute, and across different administrative levels (national, regional and local). A lack of harmonised workforce data collection mechanisms at the national level impacted the data collection, so, in general, incomplete data were reported. It was difficult to estimate the number of staff for each job function working in infectious disease prevention and control, as there is often no central registry of staff by profession, and the responsibilities of staff differ in the same country between regions and professionals. As quantifying the infectious disease workforce and the public health workforce in general is challenging, a good first step for all countries that do not currently do this should be setting up a regular census and registry to assess the current workforce capacity situation. In all respondent countries, the public health workforce working on infectious diseases increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, only some countries retained this additional staff beyond the end of the pandemic. Recruitment was not reported as a challenge, even if some difficulties hamper it, such as insufficient numbers of qualified applicants, hiring freezes due to insufficient funding, and inadequate salary scales. In contrast, most of the countries reported that retaining the appropriate number of staff is more difficult, mainly due to the high work burden and/or burnout, aging workforce leading to retirement, and inadequate.
