Health Specialist (Public Health Emergencies), P4, Regional Office for South Asia, Kathmandu, Nepal (364 days)

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Application deadline 11 months ago: Sunday 16 Apr 2023 at 18:10 UTC

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Contract

This is a P-4 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 7 years of experience, depending on education.

Salary

The salary for this job should be between 123,537 USD and 159,276 USD.

Salary for a P-4 contract in Kathmandu

The international rate of 90,970 USD, with an additional 35.8% (post adjustment) at this the location, applies. Please note that depending on the location, a higher post adjustment might still result in a lower purchasing power.

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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 and Results!

Prevention, preparedness and response to Public Health Emergencies (PHE) has become a key priority for UNICEF South Asia Regional Office (ROSA). The South Asia Region (SAR) is prone to natural disasters, disease outbreaks and health risks of climate change. While traditionally health emergencies have not been a major public health concern, as of recently, South Asia is at high risk of public health emergencies due to a number of factors, including high population density, rapid urbanization, socioeconomic vulnerabilities, high volume of national and international travels, adverse climate events and resource scarcity, land use change, zoonotic reservoirs, weak fragile public health systems, inadequate water and sanitation systems and persisting health and nutrition vulnerabilities at country-level.

In recent years, the South Asia region has been facing an increasing number of health outbreaks. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that the current level of preparedness of countries in the region is not sufficient to effectively respond to severe health emergencies and to sustain essential health services such as this pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on UNICEF efforts to advance its agenda across the region.

Since 2020, the region has had six million more children un/under vaccinated. Four countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal,) have been affected by an outbreak of cholera, not to mention the wild polio virus in circulation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, dengue outbreaks in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and on-going humanitarian and economic crises (in Afghanistan Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) including natural disasters (earthquakes, in Afghanistan, recurrent flooding in India, Nepal and Pakistan which impact negatively the progress to sustainable development. These outbreaks and humanitarian crises are expected, not only to be recurrent but also to be worse in the magnitude in the upcoming years.

Preparedness and the ability to detect and respond to disease outbreaks has become a public health priority. Surveillance and use of early warning mechanisms is essential to adopting a proactive/agile response combining trends and on-the ground evidence to inform adaptive policy making, resource mobilization, and overall strategic response. This increasingly challenging public health context highlights the need for UNICEF ROSA to develop and sustain a core capacity, leverage COVID-19 investments and resources, improve collaboration with expanded partners to strengthen wider pandemic preparedness, and provide the necessary strategic and technical assistance to COs for emergency preparedness and response, and broader response to humanitarian crises.

In view of the emerging and increasing needs within the region and the need for enhanced support at the regional level, it has become crucial for UNICEF ROSA to have a dedicated Health Specialist, Public Health Emergencies position. Under the general supervision of the Regional Health Adviser, UNICEF ROSA is seeking to recruit a P4 Health Specialist/Public Health Emergencies on temporary appointment to provide technical guidance and oversight for preparedness and response to public health emergencies and health in humanitarian crises, including innovative approaches to addressing humanitarian and development nexus.

ROSA support for public health emergencies is in line with its SoPs for early notification and coordination of public health emergencies, country office guidance for response to public health emergencies and priority diseases, and the Core Commitments for Children on public health emergencies and health in emergencies. The support is also in line with the regional strategy focused on preventing, preparing for and responding to cholera.

How can you make a difference?

A. Lead the internal and external collaborations and partnerships that facilitate strategic partnerships with key regional and global partners working on preparedness and response to health emergencies, humanitarian crises, and monitoring and surveillance, maintain highest level of contacts and active collaboration with relevant global and regional partners to coordinate activities to leverage technical and financial resources for health emergencies. This includes active participation in regional health emergency-related working groups’ periodic meetings and participation in the regional cholera platform, provide technical inputs in the drafting of regional and countries project sheets, HNOs (Humanitarian Needs Overview) and SRPs (Strategic Response Plans) in line with the UN transformative agenda and represent UNICEF ROSA in relevant meetings at global, regional and national levels to ensure that UNICEF perspectives are adequately represented in relevant strategies and frameworks related to PHE and health in emergencies including establishing and supporting coordination of the UNICEF ROSA cross sectoral public health emergencies group in response to new and emerging events, and in collaboration with the Emergency Section, coordination of UNICEF cross sectoral collaboration and exchange platforms (TETs, EMT, etc.)

B. Support the preparedness and response to public health emergencies in the South Asia region through establishment of a regional surveillance observatory, information and monitoring of public health events in the region, follow up notification and response with countries, HQ and partners, ensuring that information on the events is updated and shared with relevant parties as needed, a network of PHE focal points from all countries, the development/updating on health emergency work planning, contingency planning processes with other sectors to ensure cross sectoral response programming and resilience building and other relevant documents as needed and the development and review of health emergencies related resource mobilization proposals and reports, relevant TA and funding applications documents as needed as well as conduct country support missions as part of the first line of regional response to public health events and/or in response to TA requests/ joint preparedness and performance monitoring including for accelerated disease control initiatives.

C. Enhance capacity building initiatives by providing public health emergency guidance, sharing reports and other information to all country focal points, health managers and chiefs of health, developing the expression of interest for national health specialists/officers, and a PHE consultancy roster and review, supporting the development and roll out of a PHE toolkit in priority countries in the region, and a Maternal, newborn and child health package for humanitarian settings and developing a package for cholera response capacity building in collaboration with WASH and Social and Behavior Change regional focal points.

D. Manage public health emergencies risk analysis in selected countries in collaboration with country health teams and use the findings to develop health sector emergency preparedness and response plans with subnational level analysis and outputs, provide technical support to UNICEF SAR country offices and partners including contributing to the development/adaptation of or sharing relevant standards, protocols, guidelines and training materials for public health and health in humanitarian crises, collaborate with WASH and Social and Behavior Change sections, conduct a regional stock take and review of UNICEF SA Cholera Strategic Framework and update, lead a stock take and review or development of the UNICEF SA SOPs on early reporting and country office response to public health emergencies informed by country office and regional PHE work and other knowledge management initiatives.

E. Provide technical support to sectors/sections to coordinate technical support to COs that may include active participation in UNICEF’s cholera working team, Emergency Technical Team and Emergency Management Team, support Country Offices to develop/update and implement health emergency preparedness and response plans, monitor vaccine roll out in humanitarian settings, identifying bottlenecks and collaborate with the regional immunization team to support countries to address them, lead the development of technical updates and documents for use by SAR countries with respect to implementation of health programmes in humanitarian situations including using integrated approaches and existing emergency mechanisms, support UNICEF COs to respond to specific disease outbreaks including integration of high-quality health response in overall emergency response, and support COs to design responses that contribute to health systems strengthening, etc.

T****o qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

  • Advanced university degree in public health, medicine or other related health discipline.
  • Eight years of progressively responsible experience in public health, with field experience in responding to health emergencies.
  • Experience in coordination & partnerships, risk assessments, planning, programming, implementation monitoring and evaluation of public health emergency programs relevant to communicable disease control.
  • Expertise in viral haemorrhagic diseases; vaccine preventable diseases; epidemiology & surveillance; International Health Regulations including JEEs/country core capacity assessments.
  • Experience with UNICEF and other agencies/NGOs in emergency settings agency, and/or INGOs.
  • Country work experience, especially in the region, with work experience in a decentralized health systems is an advantage.
  • Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.

For every Child, you demonstrate...

UNICEF’s Core Values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust and Accountability and Sustainability (CRITAS) underpin everything we do and how we do it. Get acquainted with Our Values Charter: UNICEF Values

UNICEF competencies required for this post are…

  • 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.

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 be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

Remarks:

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

UNICEF’s active commitment towards diversity and inclusion is critical to deliver the best results for children. For this position, eligible and suitable females are encouraged to apply.

UNICEF appointments are subject to medical clearance. Issuance of a visa by the host country of the duty station, which will be facilitated by UNICEF, is required for IP positions. Appointments are also subject to inoculation (vaccination) requirements, including against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid). Government employees that are considered for employment with UNICEF are normally required to resign from their government before taking up an assignment with UNICEF. UNICEF reserves the right to withdraw an offer of appointment, without compensation, if a visa or medical clearance is not obtained, or necessary inoculation requirements are not met, within a reasonable period for any reason.

Added 11 months ago - Updated 11 months ago - Source: unicef.org

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