Following approval by the National Health Scientific Research Committee of Malawi, the country has successfully completed data collection, cleaning and analysis, and validation processes for the Training Needs Assessment for TB Management. The validation meeting was held on 1st November 2017 in Lilongwe, Malawi.
This Training Needs Assessment was undertaken through administering an electronic survey to staff (all cadres) working in TB at central and district level and with support from the East Central and Southern Africa Health Community (ECSA-HC). The findings of the assessment will provide a national picture of the training needs for TB management, help to identify the content and target audience for the training and also outline some of the major challenges faced in implementing training programs.
The validation meeting was attended by participants from the National TB Program (NTP), district level and partners who discussed the findings at length and resolved to use the findings to inform the year 2 TB training activities. It was further agreed that there will be need to monitor the impact of the trainings on the quality of TB management in the target districts. Finally, the participants called for the tool to be administered beyond the Southern Africa Tuberculosis and Health Systems Support (SATBHSS) project sites so that the results could be generalized to the entire country.
The findings will be disseminated in a national and regional report which is currently under finalization. ECSA-HC is implementing a number of regional studies in year one as part of the operationisation of the SATBHSS project year one work plan. The Training Needs Assessment will ascertain the specific skills that are required to address some of the major emerging issues that are possibly retarding the progress towards the control of the TB burden and all the four SATBHSS project countries are undertaking this exercise at country level to address context specific issues.
