The COVID-19 vaccination programs are going on throughout the country. But how are these being conducted? How is the manpower trained for the whole program amidst the pandemic? 
How are the authorities ensuring that the program is being thoroughly followed and implemented? These are some of the questions that one must be thinking so here is the behind the scenes story of the vaccination training program. The training programs have been conducted both at the State level and District level.
Training of the manpower involved in the program have been conducted virtually using platforms like National Information Center(NIC), ECHO, Integrated Government Online training’ (iGOT) portal on digital infrastructure for knowledge sharing (DIKSHA) platform of Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), educational satellite (EDUSAT) (in use in Madhya Pradesh), or other available online training platforms. Developmental partners have supported the state and districts in organizing trainings using virtual platforms.
At the state level training programs States conducted virtual trainings for COVID-19 vaccine introduction using available platforms NIC or any other state specific platforms. Also virtual training platforms available with state level immunization partners were also used for these workshops. The ECHO-India platform has also been used by the agencies for the vaccination introduction training program. For this the state has to contact the agencies by sending an email on a given address in advance mentioning details including name of training, date and time as well as expected number of participants that will log in for the training.
At the District level trainings for COVID-19 vaccine roll out have been conducted after the State level training of trainers has been completed.
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At the district level the training programs have been conducted using any platforms like NIC or other platforms like WebEx, Microsoft teams, Google meet etc. WHO-NPSP field units have been equipped with one or more of these platforms with a capacity to host a virtual meeting for up to 500 participants. Districts also conducted face to face meetings in case of poor internet connectivity, taking all COVID appropriate precautions that include small batch size, well ventilated venue, hand hygiene, use of mask/face cover and physical distancing of 2 Gaz between the participants.
There were some Self-learning modules that have been introduced like iGOT, DIKSHA and Rapid Immunization Skill Enhancement (RISE). DIKSHA platform has been used for the capacity building of frontline workers on COVID-19. The platform has hosted training resources which may be accessed by health staff in case they were unable to access the training session or if they want to revisit the training resources. DIKSHA app on Android has also being made available for ease of access. RISE is a blended-learning knowledge and skill-building package to complement the standard classroom training, developed by JSI under Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW). (India Science Wire)
