Detection, Verification, and Risk Assessment Officer

The mission of WHO in the area of transplantation is to meet the requirement of the fifty-seventh World health Assembly resolution WHA57.18..

Objectives can be summarized as follows:

To work with Member states and to provide assistance at their request to ensure effective national oversight of allogeneic and xenogeneic transplantation activities. This would ensure accountability, traceability, and appropriate surveillance of adverse events (in particular transmission of infectious agents of xenogeneic origin);

To increase access of citizens to safe and effective transplantation of cell, tissue and organ. Additionally, to ensure ethical and technical practices of the procurement of human material for transplantation to the follow-up of recipients and live donors;

To promote international cooperation to encourage the global harmonization of technical and ethical practices in transplantation. This would include the prevention of the exploitation of the disadvantaged through transplant tourism and the sale of human material for transplantation.

To encourage donation of human material for transplantation.

The "Clinical Procedures" unit in the Department of Essential Health Technologies is responsible for promoting the appropriate effective and safe use of cell, tissue and organ transplantation. This includes the surveillance of risks particularly in xenotransplantation. This department is also responsible for ensuring efficacy, safety and equity in the provision of clinical procedures in surgery, anaesthetics, obstetrics and orthopaedics particularly at the district hospital level.

The mission of WHO’s Emergency Preparedness and Response (EPR) Programme (WHE) 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 (HIR) Programme area of the EPR focuses on four major streams of work: i) enhancing public health intelligence for early detection and risk assessment of health events; ii) strengthening public health surveillance (PHI) and epidemiology based on the IDSR framework; and iii) modernizing information management systems and data analytics; and iiii) supporting countries in laboratory diagnostics and genomic surveillance.

The WHO in the African Region has been implementing the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) strategy for the past two decades as a platform for public health surveillance. The IDSR framework achieved major milestones over the years, with huge surveillance infrastructure established in 45 Member States in the African region. None-the-less, implementation of IDSR also encountered several challenges. These gaps became apparent during the Covid-19 pandemic when IDSR structures and systems were overwhelmed, with no capability to adapt. In the bid to strengthen public health surveillance in the African region, WHO AFRO developed the Transforming African Surveillance Systems (TASS) Flagship Initiative to consolidate progress and address gaps in IDSR implementation in all Member States in the region. The TASS project will focus on fully implementing the IDSR strategy including leveraging new technologies to reduce the time to identify and control public health threats

WHO AFRO has opened Regional Emergency Hubs to support countries more effectively, in close cooperation with partners and the broader United Nations ecosystem. The Nairobi Hub covers 21 member states in the Eastern and Southern African region and accordingly, supports crucial HIR and PHI activities in these countries. The primary objective of this position is to support the PHI team in the Nairobi Hub, including event-based surveillance, rapid risk assessment, and other information products to promote information sharing across WHO and Member States.

This position involves working in close collaboration with the WHE Programme, WHO HQ, Regional and Country Offices and with a broad range of partners, to provide technical expertise and promote information-sharing.

The UNV will build interactions with a broad range of external partners, UN and UN Agencies, national and international institutions to exchange findings and promote information sharing, experience and lessons learnt.

Under the general supervision of the HIR Programme Area Manager and on-site supervision of the HIR Team Lead, the PHI Officer tasks may encompass the following activities:
• Conduct routine activities for early detection of acute public health events, including but not limited to event-based surveillance; indicator-based surveillance; verification and risk assessment.
• Daily monitoring, and information-sharing on events that may constitute a public health emergency of international concern.
• Maintain a database of ongoing and historical events reported in the region.
• Organize and manage of data and information required for evidence-driven risk assessment.
• Contribute to documentation of standard operating procedures and tools for epidemic intelligence.
• Perform data analysis to assist in the development of briefing documents and materials, situation analyses, and risk assessments
• Ensure ongoing data entry into WHO tools for PHI activities, including Event Management system (EMS), Event Information System (EIS), and DHIS2-Tracker.
• Support as needed on the Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources (EIOS) platform initiative
• Monitoring and evaluation of the performance of epidemic intelligence tools and processes.
• Support the development of critical information products and reports on best practices and lessons learned on the implementation of event-based surveillance and indicator-based surveillance in the region.
• Contribute to the development of training materials and capacity building in the areas of early detection and response to acute public health events.
• Perform any other related responsibilities as assigned, including backstopping for others as required