Strengthening the National Diabetes Care Services by enhancing the capacity of health care providers

The prevalence of diabetes is increasing in India. Lack of awareness of diabetes has been found to be reason for not attempting to prevent the disease and its complications.

The WDF-funded project "Developing Capacity of Doctors and Paramedical Personnel of Public and Private Sectors for Treatment and Prevention of Diabetes" in India has been very successful and has significantly contributed to the capacity building of health care providers.

Therefore, it has been proposed to continue improving health care delivery and raise awareness by training doctors, paramedical personnel and health care educators.

Objective

The project aims to strengthen the National Diabetes Control Programme by enhancing the capacity of service providers in terms of care and education.

Approach

The State Governments of India are very supportive of the project and many have requested to participate in the project. Moreover the Central Government has developed plans to launch a National Programme for prevention and control of diabetes and related NCDs and has identified the India Diabetes Research Foundation as a resource centre for capacity building and technical support all over the country.

In total, the project seeks to train 960 doctors, 4,000 paramedical personnel and 600 health educators/dieticians from 10 projects states. These include Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Himachal Pradesh and Uttaranchal.

Training of doctors will be carried out as a 5 day workshop at the India Diabetes Research Foundation. The training sessions will all be interactive and will focus on enhancing knowledge, improving clinical skills and changing attitudes towards diabetes with the object of providing better diabetes service delivery.

Training of the paramedical personnel will mainly be conducted as out reach workshops in the project states. The paramedical personnel include grass root level staff of different disciplines such as multipurpose health workers, community health nurses and lab. technicians. The purpose of the training is to facilitate and support the process of improving diabetes care as well as raising awareness among high risk groups and the general population.

Health educators and dieticians will participate in a 2 weeks workshop at the India Diabetes Research Foundation. The aim is to train them to assist in organising large scale communications and health education activities for various groups of the population.

Participants will be from both rural and urban areas, with at least 75% from government staff and 25% from the private sector. In addition, focus will be laid to train personnel from the primary health care system.

The trained personnel are expected to share their training experiences with their colleagues, train their team members and disseminate critical messages related to prevention of diabetes and its complications.  

Expected impact

• 960 doctors trained in improved service delivery 
• 4000 paramedical personnel trained in education and awareness raising skills 
• 600 health educators/dieticians trained with a specific focus on their job responsibilities 
• An estimated number of 19,8 million people reached through awareness and improved care 

Results to date

• 11 trainers have been trained
• 88 doctors have been trained
• 252 paramedical personnel have been trained in education and awareness raising skills, training sponsored by the government of Tamil Nadu
• 60 health educators/dieticians have been trained

Project data

Area Partner Project responsible Duration Project budget WDF contribution Project number

India  India Diabetes Research Foundation  Prof. A. Ramachandran  July 2007 - December 2011  USD 1,217,059 USD 852,582 WDF06-203

This page was last updated 3-21-2008 by taj.wdf