Background:
Health systems can only function with health care workers; improving health service coverage and realizing the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is dependent on the availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality of health care workers.1  One of the key pre-requisites for providing quality healthcare services is building capacity of the health staff responsible for planning, implementing, monitoring and service delivery of the program. 
Capacity building is defined as an approach to ‘the development of sustainable skills, structures, resources and commitment to improvement in health to prolong and multiply health gains many times over'.2 There are three identified distinctive dimensions to capacity building of health workforce3 :

•Health Infrastructure or service development: Usually refers to the establishment of minimum requirements in structures, organizations, skills and resources in the program
•Program maintenance and sustainability:  Capacity to continue to deliver a particular program through a network of agencies;

•Problem solving capability of organisations and communities: The capacity of health workforce to identify gaps/challenges in health programs and develop appropriate mechanisms to address them, either building on the experience with a particular program or as an activity in its own right.

The NTEP program released the revised guideline of the Roles and Functions of the STDCs in 2023.4 The guideline outlines the necessary infrastructure and facilities required to establish and function as an STDC across the country. Based on the guidelines, STDC Bhopal has been recognized to have set up high quality infrastructure and facilities for itself to enable enhanced quality training that is in tune with the guideline mandate. The document captures the infrastructure and facilities and its role in the capacity building of different cadres of workforce in the NTEP program. 

“The STDC, Bhopal has established itself as an ideal training and capacity building institution. With its state-of-the-art infrastructure and training equipment as well as other amenities required for a training centre, STDC Bhopal has been hosting national and regional level training workshops and gradually emerging as a training hub for cadres under the NTEP program”.
- Dr. Varsha Rai, 
         State TB Officer (STO)
   STDC, Bhopal
      Madhya Pradesh

 

1.World Health Organisation (WHO): Health Workforce, website link: https://www.who.int/health-topics/health-workforce#tab=tab_1; Accessed on 27 August 2024
2. Hawe P, King L, Noort M, Jordens C, Lloyd B (2000) Indicators to Help with Capacity Building in Health Promotion. NSW Health Department, Sydney
3.Hawe P, King L, Noort M, Jordens C, Lloyd B (2000) Indicators to Help with Capacity Building in Health Promotion. NSW Health Department, Sydney
4.Central TB Division (Ministry of health Family Welfare, GoI): Related links : https://tbcindia-wp.azurewebsites.net/2024/08/07/guidelines-and-norms-f…; Accessed on 27 August 2024