Machine Learning and Disease modelling specialist

WHO is the directing and coordinating authority for health work of an international character within the United Nations system. It is responsible for leading global health action, setting health research agendas, setting standards and benchmarks, presenting evidence-based policy options, providing technical support to countries, and monitoring and to assess trends in public health.
In the 21st century, health is a shared responsibility that requires equitable access to essential care and collective defense against transnational threats.

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 three major streams of work: i) enhancing public health intelligence for early detection and risk assessment of health events; ii) strengthening public health surveillance and epidemiology based on the IDSR framework; and iii) modernizing information management systems and data analytics.

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 is opening Regional Emergency Hubs to support countries more effectively, in close cooperation with partners and the broader United Nations ecosystem. The newly opened Dakar hub is specialized in data innovation and intelligence. Dakar hub also hosts a Centre of Excellence for data Innovation and Intelligence. The center is opening a youth programme and internship on Data Innovation for Health Emergencies (DIHE).

The primary objective of this position is to develop advanced data analytics and modeling tools using artificial intelligence, machine learning and statistical methods and techniques for outbreak and other public health events trend analysis, forecasting and projections, genomic data analytics and data use, and capacity strengthening of member states in these areas.

Under the overall guidance of the EPR Hub Coordinator and the EPR Health Information and Risk Assessment Programme Area Coordinator, the incumbent oversees the sub-regional work in the area of epidemiology and disease modeling, advising on future outbreak/epidemic pathogen molecular, sequencing, and genomic surveillance, focusing on the epidemiological, clinical, and public health events data available. Successful attainment of objectives and expected results involve extensive ongoing contacts to provide strategic advice and authoritative technical expertise, with focus on initiating, negotiating and strengthening partnerships with a broad range of experts, policymakers and representatives of multi- and bilateral agencies, the UN and agencies, Member States, NGOs, academic and public health institutions.

Within the framework of the delegated authority, the incumbent is assigned all or part of the following duties:

• Conduct advanced analysis of surveillance data, outbreak intelligence data on infectious diseases, for epidemic forecasting and detection.
• In-depth analysis and visualization, exploratory analysis, patterns extraction (machine leaning, data mining) and modeling of historical outbreak data, DVA, and IDSR datasets.
• Develop automated tools to extract information and learn from the large volumes of outbreak datasets, public health intelligence generated data and risk assessment data collected.
• Disease specific in-depth data analysis and hotspot analysis and mapping, space-time analysis (e.g. cholera, yellow fewer, among others) based on patterns.
• Establish early warning systems for epidemic and pandemic-prone diseases for early detection and response to public health events of national and international concern.
• Triangulation of various sources of data including epidemiological surveillance data, IDSR data, genomic surveillance data, outbreak data, and public health intelligence and Risk assessment data
• Assessing the effectiveness of some of the current tools used for detection, verification, and assessment.
• Contribute to building capacity with novel methods within Member States and WHO for surveillance.
• Perform other related duties as assigned, including replacing and back stopping for others as required.