Health Specialist, P-3, Mbabane, Eswatini # 119042 (, 4 months)

Contract

This is a P-3 contract. This kind of contract is known as Professional and Director staff. It is normally internationally recruited only. It's a staff contract. It usually requires 5 years of experience, depending on education.

Salary

The salary for this job should be between 92,415 USD and 121,011 USD.

Please keep in mind that the salary displayed here is an estimation by UN Talent based on the location and the type of contract. It may vary depending on the organization. The recruiter should be able to inform you about the exact salary range. In case the job description contains another salary information, please refer to this one.

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

For every child, health.

In Eswatini, there is approximately 33,000 births annually. Access to maternal and newborn health services is high in Eswatini with 99 per cent of pregnant women attending at least one antenatal care (ANC) visit while 76.2 per cent attend the recommended four ANC visits. Further, 88 per cent of women deliver at health facilities and 88.3 per cent of births are attended to by skilled birth attendant (MICS 2014). Despite the high coverage of births by a skilled attendant and institutional delivery, maternal mortality remains high at 593/100,000 live births. In addition, the high HIV rates among pregnant women at 41 per cent increase the risk of mother to child transmission (MTCT) of HIV. This has increasing the risk of MTCT during breastfeeding with 6.0 per cent MTCT at 18 months, yet transmission by two months of age is lower at about 2 per cent despite the increased access to antiretroviral treatment (ART) for HIV infected pregnant women. Furthermore, neonatal mortality is high at 20/1,000 live births and under five mortality remains high at 67/1,000 live births. This highlights the need for improved Maternal and Newborn Health (MNH) and nutrition interventions of HIV positive mothers to reduce HIV infections among children, improve ART adherence, and promote positive infant feeding practices. UNICEF Eswatini 2021 to 2025 Country Programme aims at ensuring that by 2025, parents and children, with a focus on the most vulnerable, have access to equitable, integrated, quality essential health, nutrition and HIV services including during emergencies. This will be achieved through support towards improvement of Appropriate legislation, policies, strategic plans and budgets for maternal, new-born, child health, ECD and nutrition, increased Capacity of key government institutions to provide quality health, HIV, nutrition and birth registration services and strengthening Management information systems (HMIS) capacity to provide timely disaggregated information in the context of monitoring for results. One of the priority areas been addressed is maternal and newborn health taking cognizant of the high maternal and neonatal rates in the country. With support from DFID, UNICEF Eswatini is supporting the government to implement a project to improve maternal, new-born and child health, and nutrition in Eswatini started in 2019. The project is ending in September 2022. It is against this background that UNICEF Eswatini is recruiting a Health Specialist, (Maternal and Newborn Specialist) to lead the closure of the project with government. This project therefore aims at improving the lives of the most vulnerable women and children in Eswatini by ensuring pregnant women and new-born, and children access a package of quality, integrated maternal, neonatal and child care services, which will promote physical and cognitive development of children. This will be achieved by increasing access to an integrated package of essential services which include the following services: delivery by skilled birth attendants, essential new born care including management of premature babies, nurturing counselling, enhanced post-natal follow up with focus on women living with HIV and their babies, ART adherence, early infant diagnosis and immunization services, infant and young child feeding practices and improving early stimulation and nurturing of the children for improved cognitive development which is key to socio economic development of the country.

Purpose of the assignment

Under the leadership and guidance of the Chief of Young Child Survival and Development, the Health Specialist will be responsible for managing, implementing, monitoring, evaluating, and reporting the programme progress of the maternal and newborn health programme component of country programme with special focus on delivery of results of the DFID supported project. The Health Specialist provides technical guidance and management support throughout the programming processes to facilitate the administration and achievement of concrete and sustainable results according to plans, allocation, results based-management approaches and methodology (RBM), organizational Strategic Plans and goals, standards of performance, and accountability framework.

Main Duties and Responsibilities

1. Support to program development and planning

• Participate in strategic program discussion on the planning of MNH program in the context of health system strengthening. Formulate, design and prepare MNH/DFID project annual plans in line with planned project results. • Provide technical leadership in data-driven prioritization, planning and implementation of DFID supported Maternal and new-born Health interventions; • Provide Technical support and leadership on Maternal and New-born Health related policies, including advocacy in gender equality, emergency preparedness and response, with a particular focus on maternal, neonatal and child Survival; • Advocate for and leverage resources for scaling-up and replication of high impact maternal, neonatal and child survival interventions;

2. Technical and operational support to program implementation

• Provide technical and operational guidance and leadership to the MoH and NGO partners at various stages of the project implementation, monitoring and evaluation on the implementation of the project in line with the project targets and government systems for enhanced integration and sustainability • Provide MNH technical and operational support to UNICEF Eswatini office throughout all stages of programming processes and to ensure integration, coherence and harmonization of programs/projects with the broader UNICEF MNCH program. • Provide technical support to government and NGOs on capacity building of service providers and beneficiaries including leading the planning and conduct of relevant trainings in collaboration with the SRH program manager in MoH.

3. Monitoring, evaluation and reporting

• Facilitate conduct of regular and timely, technical and programmatic coordination and collaboration meetings with various stakeholders for effective project implementation and management • Participate in monitoring and evaluation exercises, programme reviews and annual sectoral reviews with the government and other counterparts to assess progress and to determine required action/interventions to achieve results related to the project • Prepare regular and mandated project reports for MoH and UNICEF to keep them informed of project progress and contribute towards donor reporting needs • Collaborate with SRH Unit and M & E Specialist, to timely, efficiently, rigorously and transparently monitor, evaluate and report on the related project activities and provide feedback for quality improvement and report on MNH program effectiveness and impact • Ensure corrective action is undertaken to address bottlenecks identified during monitoring/assessments/evaluation exercises • Submit transparent and timely reporting to donors and other partners

4. Partnerships and leveraging resources

• Participate in discussions with national partners, clients and stakeholders to promote maternal and neonatal issues and advocate for domestic resource allocation to MNH issues for enhanced sustainability • Resource mobilization from government and donors, leveraging resources with implementing partners will be ensured to adequately fill the resource gap in delivering MNH interventions. • Maintain close working relationships with other UNICEF sectors, particularly nutrition, HIV, C4D, social policy and WASH, and programme communication to ensure integration of the Health programme with other sectors; • Establish active and participatory partnerships with key Health sector stakeholders (Government, WHO, other UN agencies, NGOs, bilateral agencies, donors and national and international academic institutions) and interact with them at different stages of Health programme design and implementation; • Utilise the partnerships with stakeholders to leverage resources for Health, particularly Child Survival.

5. Knowledge management

• Document and disseminate lessons learned from MNH project to inform scale up • Provide technical leadership and coordination of relevant operational research, thus contributing to the knowledge base in MNH

Required Qualifications

Education: Advanced university degree in one of the disciplines relevant to the following areas: Medicine, Public Health, Pediatrics Health, Health Research, International Health, Health Policy and Management, Environmental Health Sciences, Family Health, Biostatistics, Socio-medical Sciences, Epidemiology, Health Education, or a field relevant to international development assistance in Health. A first university degree combined with additional years of relevant experience, can in principle be considered in lieu of an advanced degree.

Work Experience: • A minimum of five years of professional experience in maternal and neonatal health planning, programming and management. • Experience working in a developing country and international exposure. • Relevant experience in a UN system agency or organization is considered as an asset. • Experience working with large projects and donors is an asset. • Previous working experiences in a small sized MIC country office is considered as an asset. • Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of local language of the duty station is considered as an asset.

For every Child, you demonstrate...

Values and Competencies: i) Core Values Care Respect Integrity Trust Accountability ii) Core Competencies  Demonstrates Self Awareness and Ethical Awareness (1)  Works Collaboratively with others (1)  Builds and Maintains Partnerships (1)  Innovates and Embraces Change (1)  Thinks and Acts Strategically (1)  Drive to achieve impactful results (1)  Manages ambiguity and complexity (1)

To view our competency framework, please visit here.

Remarks:

UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles.

UNICEF only considers higher educational qualifications obtained from an institution accredited/recognized in the World Higher Education Database (WHED), a list updated by the International Association of Universities (IAU) / United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The list can be accessed at: http://www.whed.net

Mobility is a condition of international professional employment with UNICEF and an underlying premise of the international civil service.

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.