Role of National Institutes in STDCs

The National institutes should play a significant role in supporting strengthening the STDCs in the states. They have to 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.

National institutes will advocate for and guide the establishment of STDCs as per against the norms described earlier. Overall the National Institutes will support established STDCs in the following two ways:

1. Supervision Monitoring and Evaluation of STDCs: 

The performance of STDCs must be monitored regularly on the basis of its annual action plan by both State and Centre. From the central level NTI Bangalore, will support in monitoring the performance of STDCs on an on-going basis and provide quarterly report of the performance of the STDCs to CTD. This will include:

  1. monitoring the performance of each STDC against their annual plan including the training status of the TB related workforce and the quality and status of feedback provided by STDCs to districts on their performance.
  2. 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.
  3. Provide feedback to the Central TB Division, STDCs and STCs, regarding the performance and available capacity in STDCs, in an action oriented manner.

  4. Based on the Supportive supervision conducted across the country NTI Bangalore needs to submit a compiled Quarterly report to CTD. 

    Refer to the checklist given at the end of the section on Supervision Monitoring and Evaluation of STDCs, on the components to be included in SM&E of STDCs by the National Institute.

  5. Advocate for prompt action from the state and centre regarding the same.

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. 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.
  4. Theme specific Training/ workshops
    1. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.