Many disease control programme officers have suboptimal data management skills for collecting, processing and interpreting routine surveillance data. This makes it difficult to set programme priorities, plan operations, implement and evaluate programme activities. It results in the lack of evidence-based programme management.

A data management training course for tuberculosis was developed in the state of Orissa, India in 2005. It was subsequently applied in two other states in India (2006), Myanmar (2007) and Bangladesh and Thailand (2008). The one-week training courses focused on the knowledge, skills and motivation of the TB control officers, the interface between data management and TB control programme implementation, and sustainability through involvement of the designated supervisors, who act as continuous educators and motivators.

The entire process consists of four elements: pre-course assignment, theoretical-practical training course, post-course implementation, and assessment of the impact of the course on TB control programme implementation. The training course lasts 5-6 days. Ideally all supervisors participate as facilitators.

So far about 60 TB control officers were trained in Bangladesh in two batches. They included both government and NGO staff. The assessment was carried out following a framework developed by Kirkpatrick, which focuses on participants’ level of satisfaction, knowledge and skills acquired, on the shift of attitude towards evidence-based programme management, transfer of skills to increase job satisfaction, and improved outcome.

This type of short course has shown that it is possible to increase the epidemiological and biostatistical knowledge necessary for transforming data into information that is useful for programme management. It can also induce a shift of attitude towards evidence-based programme management. Furthermore the programme performance has a tendency to improve.

Report of the first MIFA training course in Bangladesh (.pdf 80kb)