Role of National Institutes in STDCs

The National institutes should play a significant role in supporting strengthening the STDCs in the states. They will provide technical guidance and training for strengthening of STDCs in supporting State TB cell. The National Tuberculosis Institute (NTI), Bangalore, will be the nodal national institute for this purpose, while the other national institutes such as the NITRD, New Delhi and the NIRT, Chennai will support NTI, Bangalore for specific support functions across the country or regionally as suitable.

Overall the National Institutes will support NTEP in two ways:

1. Provide SM&E support to all STDCs of the country: 

This will include:

  1. Monitoring establishment and performance of STDCs: National institutes will monitor, the establishment of STDCs against the norms described earlier and the performance of each STDC against their annual plan. They will provide feedback to the Central TB Division, STDCs and STCs, regarding the performance and available capacity, in an action oriented manner. They would also advocate for prompt action from the state and centre regarding the same.  
  2. Conduct Supportive Supervision: National institutes will conduct need based supervisory visits to all the States and STDCs so as to cover all the states which are expected to have an STDC at least once in a year. They will provide action oriented feedback for improvement.

Details of the components to be included in SM&E of STDCs by the National Institute is provided in the section on Supervision Monitoring and Evaluation of STDCs.

2. Build Capacity and expertise: 

Based on the monitoring and supportive supervision the NTI Bangalore will prepare a STDC strengthening and capacity building strategy and annually plan activities in relation to this. The strategy and activities should include, but not limited to the following areas 

  1. Induction Training of STDC and State level staff: All STDC and State level staff, including the STO and STDC director should be trained by the National Institutes. This should include training on Program Operational areas and separate capacity building on their individual functions (such as Training, SM&E, Administration) based on the standard training materials provided by the Centre.
  2. Training of trainers (TOT): The National Institutes will host the resource pool of all Master trainers in NTEP. Using the Master Trainers they are responsible for building the Trainer Resource Pool at the State level as per the needs of the state. The quantity of trainers required will be collaboratively identified by the state and the National Institute based on the load of training in the state. Whenever there is a shortfall in the resource pool, the state may request the NTI to conduct Training of Trainers, or such sessions may also be proactively conducted by the National Institute. 
  3. Theme specific Training/ workshops
    1. Update training of trainers on changes or new program implementation: Based on new program operation areas introduced or changes inducted by the Central TB Division, the master trainer pool at the National institute should conduct Update training of all corresponding state level trainers.
    2. Surveillance and Data for action: This would include workshop for analysis and interpretation of data available from the Ni-kshay Information Ecosystem, and would be aimed to identify program performance gaps, conduct root cause analyses, and prepare action oriented feedback for improving program performance.
    3. State TB elimination strategy development workshops: These will be conducted by NIs on a periodic basis and will support the STDCs to develop State specific strategies, review and evolve them as per need.
    4. Operational research: National institutes will build the capacity of the STDCs in conducting OR and by training and mentor them. 

Details of the conduct of training and content will be provided in the NTEP Training Guidelines.