Certification of TB culture and drug susceptibility testing laboratories through the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP).

The RNTCP is implementing the Programmatic Management of Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (PMDT) for detecting and treating drug resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB). Diagnostic services for DR-TB is provided through a network of RNTCP certified Culture and Drug Susceptibility Testing (C&DST) laboratories.This paper describes about the process involved in certification of C&DST laboratories for different technologies used in RNTCP.