Epidemiologist at World Health Organization

Description Of Duties

During deployment, the duty station may change, and duties may be modified, based upon the technical needs of the Programme.

• Provide technical support and assist in the development of surveys and monitoring/surveillance systems for detection, verification and response to public health incidents; ensuring efficiency of data collection, correlation, analysis, interpretation and timely reporting at health facility at the district levels.
• Collate and verify data on reported outbreaks or rumours received from multiple sources, conduct retrospective analysis of reported incidents: determine trends, distribution patterns, and efficiency of the verification mechanism.
• Brief the team on data quality improvement, use of data for monitoring of trends, ALERT and ACTION thresholds (triggers), as well as methodologies for performing Data Quality Audit (DQA) at district and health facility level.
• Provide technical assistance for the establishment and functionality of Rapid Response Teams (RRTs) and Public Health Management Committee (PHEMC) for potential hazards such as infectious diseases, zoonotic events, food safety events and chemical events at the district level as per the national guidance and standards.
• Contribute in building the core surveillance, alert and response national capacities in accordance with the requirement for IHR 2005; provide trainings for subnational incident management team and health facility level staff, support the team in the supervision and on-the-job training at health facility level.
• Support the development of early warning systems (including event based and indicator based surveillance) for epidemic and pandemic-prone diseases for early detection and response to public health incidents; conduct field investigation. Provide technical support for vulnerability assessment, risk mapping and development of preparedness/contingency plan at district level.
• Maintain an incident management system database of reported outbreaks and public health incidents, at the district level, and document all steps taken in the verification and response process.
• Facilitate the district surveillance monthly review meetings including the tracking of the surveillance performance indicators. In cooperation with the team, monitor and evaluate the implementation of the planned surveillance activities, as well as alert and response capacities for incidents detection, verification and response in compliance with IHR 2005.
• Prepare and disseminate disease outbreak news, technical documents, updates and assessments to key decision-makers in the organizational hierarchy and to the national health authorities, as required using standard tools and templates (e.g. OSCAR).
• Perform any other incident-specific related duties, as required by the functional supervisor.

Required Qualifications

Education

Essential: First university degree in epidemiology, statistics, database management or public health from an accredited/recognized institute.

Desirable: An advanced university degree in health related field or quantitative epidemiology, specialized training in communicable diseases

Experience

Essential: At least five years of related experience, at the national and international levels, implementation of public health surveillance, outbreak investigation and response. Previous experience in implementation of Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) is a requirement.