Consultancy - Epidemiology and Disease Control Specialist at UNICEF

Scope of Work

Goal and Objective:  

This assignment aims at ensuring provision of timely remote and onsite technical assistance to countries for preparedness and response to major ongoing and anticipated public health events in ESA region. It will support the timely and systematic analysis of public health risks and events, planning, and monitoring of public health action in priority countries and at the regional level in the context of C19 vaccination deployment. Additionally, wherever possible, promote interventions for preventing and addressing disruptions thereby facilitating health systems resilience.

Provide details/reference to AWP areas covered: 

This assignment pertains to SIC 31-01-15 Epidemic preparedness and Response, specifically this relates to the activity on technical assistance for preparedness, monitoring and response to disease outbreaks and other public health events and resilience building. It also pertains to Output 2: COs health programmes are well designed, implemented and demonstrate results, and specifically to the activity on deployment of the COVID-19 vaccines

Activities and Tasks:  

 Preparedness and response to public health emergencies and humanitarian crises

• Develop and disseminate a weekly and monthly summary of emerging and ongoing public health events including those with cross border impact, with recommendations for UNICEF focus at country and regional levels.
• Contribute to key regional reports on major public health events (including drought, floods, outbreaks such as measles, cholera, VHFs) as needed.
• Deploy the risk assessment tool to ESA priority countries experiencing crises, contribute to improve/amend the tool for different contexts, and support for risk informed planning and risk mapping including at the subnational level.
• Contribute to monitoring of surveillance activities in countries experiencing crisis for timely decision making in response and conduct visits to provide hands-on to country offices where required.

Desired competencies, technical background, and experience

• Advanced university degree in public health or applied epidemiology. A first level university degree with a relevant combination of academic qualifications and 2 additional years of experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.
• At least eight years’ experience in the management of public health emergencies and vaccine preventable disease outbreaks including cross sectoral and multi-agency preparedness planning and coordination of response at national and/or international level.
• Ability to manage large data sets and to present information in multiple formats, including geospatial mapping tools (such as GIS) and visualization software like Power Bi, and others. Experience doing this with the UN, NGOs or government in a developing country for outbreak response is a plus.
• Experience in technical writing including but not limited to official public health documents for UN agencies, contributions to government health policies and guidelines and academic publications
• Languages: Fluency in English (verbal and written). Knowledge of another official language used in the ESA Region is not essential but desirable.
• Familiarity with UNICEF processes and approaches is highly desired asset