Human resource capacity building initiatives for public health laboratories in India.

Public health laboratories play a critical role in disease surveillance and response. With changes in disease dynamics and transmission, their role has evolved over time, and they serve a range of important public health functions. For their effective functioning, it is important to have specialized manpower in these laboratories, which can contribute to their maximum utilization. The present manuscript is an attempt to explore the human resource capacity building initiatives for public health laboratories in India. Using three parallel methods we have attempted to gather information regarding various human resource capacity building initiatives for public health laboratories in India. Our study results show that there is a paucity of programs providing specialized training for human resources in public health laboratories in India. It highlights the urgent need to address this scarcity and introduce capacity building measures to generate human resources for public health laboratories to strengthen their role in public health action.