Public Health and Humanitarian Information Officer

OBJECTIVES OF THE PROGRAMME

The mission of WHO AFRO’s EPR Cluster is to support member states i) to prepare for and prevent disease outbreaks and health emergencies, ii) to promptly detect, speedily report, and confirm outbreaks and iii) to strengthen and sustain their capacity to promptly respond to and recover from the negative effects of outbreaks and health emergencies. Within the EPR Cluster, the overall mandate of the HIR unit is to provide risk management support, develop public health intelligence and strengthen epidemiological surveillance and information systems, in member states to rapidly mitigate the impact of public health crises. The HIR unit leads the implementation of the “Transforming African Surveillance Systems” (TASS) flagship program which is structured around five key pillars: Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) implementation, data and information management, workforce development, policy dialogue & advocacy and predictable and sustainable financing.

PURPOSE OF THE POSITION

The mission of WHO’s Health Emergencies 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 outbreak of different pandemic requires a timely and quality production and sharing of information. The Health Information and Risk Assessment team of the WHO, emergencies, preparedness and response cluster has the mandate to collect, analyze data in the region and propose quality products to the public and to various stakeholders in the WHO African region. There is need to maintain and enhance the GIS data collection and analyses process leading to quality products, as well as to enhance the existing products or build new products.

Description Of Duties

Within the framework of the delegated authority, the incumbent is assigned all or part of the following duties which are performed according to needs:

• Contribute to all aspects of the documentation of public health and humanitarian events including surveillance, risk assessments and analyses, monitoring, and information-sharing on potential events that may constitute a public health and humanitarian emergency of international concern;
• Develop and/or maintain a database of historical events reported in the region to ease access, retrieval and analysis of data and information required for evidence-driven risk assessment;
• Support the development and deployment of humanitarian events monitoring tools by contributing to the definition of technical requirements and testing of surveillance, event management and other modules;
• Develop and/or update the standard operating procedures and tools for humanitarian events management;
• Perform analyses to assist in the formulation of briefing documents and materials; situation analyses; and convening multi-disciplinary risk assessments, as appropriate.
• Participate in activities including but not limited to supporting the further development and maintenance of the WHO Event Management system (EMS) and Event Information System (EIS) and other event-based surveillance systems; supporting the development and future implementation of new tools;
• Monitoring and evaluation of performance of surveillance and response activities;
• Develop or contribute to the development of critical humanitarian emergency information products, including but not limited to PHSA, Health Resources and Services Availability Monitoring System (HeRAMS), Flash Appeals, Situation Reports; reports on best practices and lessons learned on the implementation surveillance in the region; and scientific articles.
• Contribute to development of training materials and capacity building in the areas of early detection and response to public health and humanitarian events.
• Partake in emergency epidemiological field missions as required.
• Perform other related responsibilities as assigned, including backstopping for others as required.

Required Qualifications

Education

Essential:

•  University degree in one of the following disciplines: Public Health,
• Epidemiology, Public Health Informatics, or related disciplines.

Desirable:

•  In-service training in field epidemiology such as Field Epidemiology (and Laboratory) Training Programmes (FELTP), the European Program for Intervention Epidemiology Training (EPIET), the CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service programme, or equivalent experience.

Experience

Essential: 

• At least a minimum of five (5) years' experience in humanitarian information management, disease surveillance, prevention, and control.
• Proven experience and knowledge of implementing epidemiological surveillance activities at country level.
• Experience in statistical data analysis, data management.
• Practical experience in the use of statistical software packages (e.g., SPSS, R, STATA, SAS) for epidemiological analysis during emergencies will be an asset.
• Experience using DHIS2 or other data management platforms.

Desirable

• Working experience on emergencies in Africa. Experience in conducting disease surveillance, prevention and control in humanitarian settings. Experience of working with WHO or other UN agencies would be an asset.
• Experience in WHO and/or the UN System in the areas of outbreak preparedness and response; field experience in public health programmes or emergency response programmes in developing countries.
• Experience in routine analysis and reporting of time-sensitive public health data. Good understanding of the IDSR strategy and its implementation is an asset.
• Field experience in epidemiology, surveillance and/or control of acute public health events experience in resource limited countries; experience of working with event-based surveillance; good understanding in inter-agency collaboration or in WHO, UN, UN Agencies or other international organizations.

Skills

The following functional knowledge, skills and experience are required:

• Experienced using R and Shiny
• Experienced using business intelligence tools (PowerBI)
• Programming skills (Python, Java Scripts, etc.)
• Experienced using programming skills for geoprocessing automation
• Experienced using ESRI products
• Experienced working in emergency situations
• Good interpersonal skills

WHO Competencies

• Teamwork
• Respecting and promoting individual and cultural differences.
• Communication.
• Promoting innovation and organizational learning
• Building and promoting partnerships across the organization and beyond.

Use Of Language Skills

• Essential: Expert knowledge of French
• Desirable: Intermediate knowledge of English
• The above language requirements are interchangeable.