Public Health Surveillance and Intelligence Officer

The World Health Organization (WHO), a specialized agency of the United Nations dedicated to promoting global health. Our Timor-Leste office is one of 11 country offices under the agency's South-East Asia Regional Office (SEARO) and has been operating since 1999. Our team comprises a diverse group of national and international staff and consultants who collaborate closely with the government and other partners. We receive continuous support from SEARO as well as the WHO headquarters in Geneva.

Our work focuses on collaborating with the Timorese government and other partners to develop and implement health programs that address a range of issues. From integrated disease surveillance to capacity building, risk communication, emergency preparedness, and response, we work closely with the government to tackle health challenges on multiple fronts, by leveraging our expertise and resources.

Through advocacy and support for health-promoting policies, sustainable development of health systems, and targeted health programs, we aim to reduce the burden of diseases and improve health conditions for all Timorese people. Ultimately, our work also contributes to poverty alleviation and gender equity, in line with Timor-Leste's national health development goals. We are proud to serve Timor-Leste and look forward to continuing our important work towards a healthier, more equitable future.

Public health surveillance is the continuous, systematic collection, analysis and interpretation of health-related data for action. Disease surveillance data serves as the basis for the detection of potential outbreaks for an early warning system to prevent what could become public health emergencies. It enables monitoring and evaluation of the impact of an intervention, helps track progress towards specified goals and clarifies the epidemiology of health issues. An effective disease surveillance system is essential to detect disease outbreaks quickly before they spread, cost lives and become difficult to control. Public health intelligence (PHI) is a core public health function focused on gathering, analyzing, and interpreting data to inform decision-making and improve population health. It involves monitoring health threats, identifying health problems and priorities, and formulating public policies. PHI aims to move from data to knowledge synthesis and actionable insights, enabling timely and effective responses to public health challenges.

Timor-Leste has a high burden of diseases of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, dengue, and neglected diseases such as leprosy, soil transmitted helminth infections, and yaws, also remain a major public health challenge, being endemic in some municipalities. The Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) guideline, published in 2019 and revised in 2023 presented 50 notifiable diseases, health conditions, and events to be reported by 3 different categories. Since 2022, Timor-Leste has implemented the KOICA-funded project "Strengthening Prevention and Response to Infectious Diseases in Timor-Leste", aimed at enhancing national surveillance capacity.

Despite these efforts, the country still faces significant challenges in the timely detection and diagnosis of priority infectious diseases. Limitations include incomplete implementation of guidelines, a shortage of trained surveillance personnel, and the existence of fragmented surveillance systems with limited response capacity, particularly at the subnational level.

Under the overall supervision of the WHO Representative to Timor Leste and the direct supervision of the Technical Officer Surveillance & Epidemiology, the UN Volunteer will undertake the following tasks:

- Assist in the operationalization of national surveillance strategies and guidelines, particularly related to the Event-Based Surveillance.

- Assist in planning and delivery of training, workshops, and related capacity building activities.

- Support the collection, organization, and dissemination of surveillance-related knowledge products, tools, and resources.

- Support systematic documentation of surveillance programme activities, including meeting minutes, programmatic reports, and training summaries.

- Maintain records of training activities and support the development of a database of trained personnel.

- Support reporting and documentation, including development of briefs, technical reports, and presentations.

- Assist in maintaining up-to-date documentation of the WHO health emergencies programme activities.

- Any other duties as assigned by the WHO Representative to Timor Leste