The Institute of Public Health has renewed the district health management course in Tumkur; for those who did not complete the course earlier and for those who were transferred into the district after the original course was completed.
The course was held on 29th and 30th of January 2013 at Tumkur itself. There were 23 participants (out of 30) and all attended both the days. Of these 14 were district or taluk level health officers and the remaining 9 were BPMs from the taluks.
The main topic covered in the two days was monitoring using indicators. The reason for this was that it was observed that most of the taluk health officers use only numbers to monitor, which does not give a true sense of the performance of their taluks. In order to sharpen the monitoring, we taught them the skills of calculating an indicator and interpreting an indicator. This was done through a series of exercises using their own data.
At the end of the course, the District Health Officer visited and reinforced the message of using indicators to manage their taluk health services. A field assignment was also given to the participants; all of them were given the task of calculating maternal health indicators for their taluk and present it at the next PHC medical officers’ meeting.
