National Professional Officer

The mission of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme (The Programme) is to help countries, and to coordinate international action, when needed, in order to prevent, prepare for, detect, rapidly respond to, and recover from outbreaks and other public health emergencies.

Duties:

Working closely with the relevant national/provincial health authorities, the incumbent:

• Coordinate health activities for enhancing surveillance and response for emerging diseases, diseases with epidemic potentials and other high threat pathogens at national/provincial level
• Co-develop the guidelines, tools and indicators for effective disease surveillance at the national, subnational and community level.
• Develop plan for enhancing surveillance for early detection of health threats from infectious diseases with epidemic and pandemic potentials.
• Strengthen the capacities of surveillance teams for the effective and sustained surveillance of epidemic prone diseases through training courses on field investigation, detection, data management, and rapid response to epidemics and health outbreaks.
• Promote the effective coordination for rapid assessment, surveillance and response activities for epidemic-prone diseases in consultation with Regional Office and HQ as well as local, regional and national health entities and other international health partners including UN agencies and NGOs.
• Undertake regular field supervision visits to assess and evaluate the implementation of surveillance activities, identify gaps and recommend corrective actions based on key performance indicators;
• Coordinate and manage emergency response operations for outbreaks and other public health crisis;
• Collect required epidemiological descriptive data and other public health indicators in order to assess and monitor the quality and effectiveness of ongoing public health interventions for outbreak containment;
• Analyse, systematize, and disseminate scientific and evidence-based technical information and knowledge; support the development of the WHO Situation Reports, other related regular and ad-hoc surveillance reports; and disseminate these reports to all concerned; and provide feedbacks on the prevailing situation to the supervisors on a regular basis;
• Monitor the implementation of public health programmes for prevention and control of emerging and epidemic diseases;
• Assess and periodically review health threats from epidemic diseases and periodically conduct public health risk analysis for health threats and develop a public health risk profile for epidemic and other potential health threats
• Identify hot spots and other high risk geographic areas for transmission and circulation of high threat pathogens using a host of historical epidemiological surveillance data and also using innovative technology (GIS Mapping)
• Identify training needs and prepare training materials for improving surveillance capacity and response.
• Coordinate with the local health authority to ensure that quality disease surveillance and response is in place.
• Perform any other relevant tasks as assigned by the supervisors.

Requirements  Qualifications:

Education

Essential:

• First level university degree in medicine and/or public health planning and administration, complemented by training in public health/epidemiology/health science.

Experience:

Essential:

• At least 5 years of experience required in public health surveillance with emphasis on emergency response relief and/or the management of epidemic-prone diseases.

Skills:

• Demonstrated knowledge, competency and professional skills on the public health aspects of infectious disease control, epidemic and pandemic preparedness and response with particular attention to application of an all-hazard approach in the context of the International Health Regulations (2005) and the use of event based and indicator-based surveillance, as well as descriptive epidemiology and principles of public health in communicable disease surveillance and response;
• Managerial skills for the development, implementation, monitoring and analysis of public health programmes for infectious diseases within a highly demanding work environments;
• Sound knowledge and skills in database management and statistical analysis, secondary data review, survey designing and implementation, monitoring and evaluation systems design or use, and public health information management
• Strong professional oral and writing skills including the development of reports, oral presentations and technical guidance and advocacy documents.

Language Skills

Essential:

• Expert knowledge of English. Expert knowledge of Urdu.

Source: https://careers.who.int/careersection/ex/jobdetail.ftl?job=2408809