Technical Officer

The mission of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme (the Programme) is to build the capacity of Member States to manage health emergency risks and, when national capacities are overwhelmed, to lead and coordinate the international health response to contain outbreaks and to provide effective relief and recovery to affected populations. The Health Emergency Information and Risk Assessment (HIM) Unit is responsible for identifying new public health events, assessing risks to public health, conducting epidemiological surveillance and field investigations, monitoring public health interventions, and communicating public health information to technical partners and stakeholders. HIM unit also support countries to strengthen surveillance systems and capacities for epidemiological investigation and risk assessment.

Duties:

Under the direct supervision of PAM HIM and overall guidance of LRE and RED, the incumbent is assigned with the following responsibilities:

• Provide strategic advice and technical assistance to countries to strengthen multi-source collaborative surveillance, to enable the effective use of multi-source information to guide decision making during emergencies. This involves strengthening of the collaboration among surveillance stakeholders.
• Support countries to review and assess national surveillance systems and capacities to inform planning to strengthen surveillance systems and to further advance implementation of IHR(2005).
• Collaborate with relevant authorities of the countries to develop national plan of action to strengthen surveillance systems and epidemiology capacities. This duty may involve assisting prioritization of infectious diseases and other health security threats.
• Provide technical assistance to countries in development, review and revision of guidelines, standard operating procedures, and protocols for surveillance systems, risk assessment and epidemiological investigations.
• Facilitate provision of technical assistance to countries to introduce innovative or non-traditional approaches of surveillance, which may have potential to improve performance of the national surveillance systems.
• Support countries to build capacities for risk assessment for acute public health events.
• Provide technical assistance to countries to strengthen filed epidemiology, data management and analytics capacities, in collaboration with concerned colleagues.
• Provide technical support to advance One Health approach in surveillance, risk assessment and field epidemiology to address public health risks at human-animal-environment interrace.
• Provide technical assistance to countries in strengthening health information systems for public health surveillance, advancing interoperability and incorporating analytics functions.
• Support regional public health intelligence activities, including detection, verification and assessment of acute public health events, and production of relevant information products.
• Take part in health emergency response, as part of the surveillance and epidemiology pillar of the Incident Management Support Team. This duty may involve deployment (or remote technical support) to affected countries or areas to assist information management
• Represent HIM/WHE/SEARO to various technical meetings related to surveillance, epidemiology & monitoring and related training.13. Provide technical inputs in developing project proposals and reports.14. Perform any other duties including as required by the PAM/HIM, including backstopping for others.

Required Qualifications:

Education

Essential:

• Advanced University degree (Masters level or above) in public health, epidemiology or preventive medicine.

Experience:

Essential:

• At least seven years of experience in managing or strengthening public health surveillance, with at least three years of experiences on surveillance for infectious diseases of epidemic and pandemic potential in low- and middle-income countries;
• Demonstrated experiences engaging various stakeholders in collaborative efforts to strengthen surveillance systems;
• Demonstrated experiences in conducting rapid risk assessment for acute public health events, in the context of low- and middle-income countries.
• At least four years of international exposure, as defined as work experience in a multicultural environment; proven relevant experience of working with partners across different geographical/cultural settings; and/or proven relevant experience of working on a project in different geographical/cultural settings.

Skills:

• Demonstrated experiences and technical knowledge in public health surveillance on emerging diseases and outbreak-prone diseases, risk assessment and epidemiological investigation.• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills to advise Ministries of Health in low and middle-income countries.• Sound knowledge and skills in data management and statistical analysis, survey designing and implementation, and public health information management.• Proven ability to multi-task across various planning and implementation processes within a highly demanding environment• 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 IHR(2005)

Language Skills:

Essential:

• Expert knowledge of English.

Source:  https://careers.who.int/careersection/ex/jobdetail.ftl?job=2403796