The World Health Organization’s mission: to promote health, keep the world safe, and serve the vulnerable. Working through offices in more than 150 countries, WHO staff work side by side with governments and other partners to ensure the highest attainable level of health for all people.

OBJECTIVES OF THE PROGRAMME

The overall goal of WHO’s Outbreak and Health Emergencies (OHE) Programme is to minimize the health consequences of emergencies due to any biological, natural, technological or societal hazard. Collective and sound health emergency and disaster risk management is essential to health security, to sustainable development and to building the resilience of communities, countries and health systems.

The objectives of WHO’s OHE Programme are: to help Member States build their capacity 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 minimise the impact on the health of affected populations. WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme directs all of the Organization’s work in health emergency risk management, with an all-hazards approach comprising risk reduction, preparedness, readiness, response and early recovery activities, and with a particular emphasis on the identification and mitigation of infectious hazards and risks.

The Programme is responsible for establishing and managing WHO’s operational capacity in acute and protracted emergencies, setting overall strategy and ensuring appropriate operational planning, managing field operations, developing and ensuring adherence to technical standards, and ensuring risk and performance monitoring. The Programme engages in relevant partnerships and inter-agency processes, recognizing that its impact should be optimized by coordinating, leveraging and facilitating the implementation roles of other local, national and international entities and partners best positioned to deliver the relevant clinical or other public health services. WHO’s OHE Programme integrates and operates under the principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence in the serving

PURPOSE OF THE POSITION

In the context of the Outbreaks and Health Emergencies incident management system, serve as the regional focal point for incident data management system, this includes oversee the collection, collation, management and analysis of data relevant to the emergency incident, to aggregate the relevant information in the form of narrative text, maps and graphics for use in decision making, health sector situation reports, donor reports, and other relevant documents.

Description Of Duties

Reporting to the Regional Coordinator, and under the overall guidance of the Incident Manager, the incumbent will have front line responsibility for information and data Management activities at the Regional level. He/she will collect, triangulate, compile relevant information to the emergency preparedness, prevention, response and recovery programmes, ensuring their reliability and accuracy. He/she will have ongoing contacts with national authorities, other UN agencies, health cluster partners, INGOs, etc. to facilitate the collection and dissemination of related data.

• Manage the incident related databases (cases and contacts) including content, structure, file location, backup system.
• Collect, collate, manage and analyze data from all partners; aggregate the relevant health related information such as mortality and morbidity, location of hospitals, Primary health care units, other health care facilities, etc.. and transform it into narrative text, maps and graphics to enable strategic planning and decision making.
• Aggregate and maintain information from technical teams, field offices and partners including contact lists, event specific information (what, where, who, how many, how quickly, current status),health indicator data, health situation data, health response data, etc…

• Develop tools to harmonize data collection and processes across WCO and field offices to facilitate consolidation of information. Respond to specific information requests from the technical teams and partners, ensure dissemination of information and knowledge sharing with all partners.
• Provide country-specific and aggregate inter-country information to the relevant WCO websites, manage email boxes and share points, as required.
• Provide technical expertise during inter-agency initiatives, related to information and data management, seeking to improve information sharing between institutions, to strengthen access to information from other organizations and clusters, and to contribute to inter-sectoral dashboards and reports.
• Verify data quality (completeness, timeliness), identify gaps in health information management, recommend corrective actions and prepare relevant documents to include in project proposals, internal and external situation reports (SitReps), bulletins, health risk assessments, health needs overviews (HNO), and strategic response plans (SRP), etc.
• Participate in any other activity that may be required in connection with the management of incident data management.
• Perform any other incident-specific related duties, as required by the functional supervisor.

Required Qualifications

Education

Essential: First university degree in information or data management, computer science, statistics, or public health, complemented by training in databases development and/or management from an accredited/recognized institute.

Desirable: Post graduate degree in public health, qualitative surveillance, or statistics.

Experience

Essential: At least two years’ relevant experience combined at the national and international levels in data and/or information management, including experience in emergency operations or humanitarian context.

Desirable: Prior emergency disaster and health outbreak response or humanitarian working experience at field level, with WHO/UN agencies or with an international Non-Governmental Organization.

Functional Knowledge And Skills

• Demonstrated knowledge of information management and monitoring systems as related to emergency response and relief operations.
• Proven skills in the field of statistical data collection, assessment, analysis and monitoring in a public health context.
• Advance ability to design, manage, analyze and coordinate complex information system projects, computer-based applications and databases, web-based tools

WHO Competencies

• Communication
• Teamwork
• Moving forward in a changing environment
• Promoting innovation and organizational learning.
• Respecting and promoting individual and cultural differences

Use of Language Skills

Essential: Excellent knowledge of English or French (depending on the country of assignment). Working knowledge of another WHO official language would be an asset.

Other Skills (e.g. IT Skills)

• Excellent knowledge of Microsoft office applications.
• Working knowledge of online data collection applications, statistical analysis packages (Stata, SPSS, etc).
• Good knowledge of database and GIS programmes (e.g. ArcView)

Additional Information

• Locations/Duty Stations – This position is available in Afar, Amhara, South West, Dire Dawa & Benishangul
• Remuneration – this is a Special Service Agreement at NOB Level for six months (6) with a monthly remuneration of $ 2,359.17
• Only candidates under serious consideration will be contacted.
• A written test may be used as a form of screening.
• If your candidature is retained for interview, you will be required to provide, in advance, a scanned copy of the degree(s)/diploma(s)/certificate(s) required for this position. WHO 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 through the link: http://www.whed.net/. Some professional certificates may not appear in the WHED and will require individual review.
• For information on WHO’s operations please visit: http://www.who.int.
• WHO is committed to workforce diversity.
• WHO has a smoke-free environment and does not recruit smokers or users of any form of tobacco.
• Applications from women and from nationals of non and underrepresented Member States are particularly encouraged.
• WHO prides itself on a workforce that adheres to the highest ethical and professional standards and that is committed to put the WHO Values Charter into practice.
• WHO has zero tolerance towards sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA), sexual harassment and other types of abusive conduct (i.e., discrimination, abuse of authority and harassment). All members of the WHO workforce have a role to play in promoting a safe and respectful workplace and should report to WHO any actual or suspected cases of SEA, sexual harassment and other types of abusive conduct. To ensure that individuals with a substantiated history of SEA, sexual harassment or other types of abusive conduct are not hired by the Organization, WHO will conduct a background verification of final candidates.
• Consultants shall perform the work as independent contractors in a personal capacity, and not as a representative of any entity or authority. The execution of the work under a consultant contract does not create an employer/employee relationship between WHO and the Consultant.

WHO shall have no responsibility whatsoever for any taxes, duties, social security contributions or other contributions payable by the Consultant. The Consultant shall be solely responsible for withholding and paying any taxes, duties, social security contributions and any other contributions which are applicable to the Consultant in in each location/jurisdiction in which the work hereunder is performed, and the Consultant shall not be entitled to any reimbursement thereof by WHO.