Contract Duration: Nine months
Closing Date/Time for applications: January 31st, 2020 10:00 CET (Geneva time)
Eye Care is integral to Universal Health Coverage (UHC), and demand for services is increasing with the health and epidemiologic trends that characterize the 21st century. Despite this, many countries do not have the capacity to address the existing eye care needs of their populations. A shortage of trained human resources is one of the greatest challenges to increasing the availability of eye care services and reducing the prevalence of vision impairment and blindness that can been prevented or still needs to be addressed. Several factors accentuate the problems associated with the shortage of health workers in low- and middle-income countries; these include suboptimal distribution (both geographically and across income levels), issues with retention, and poor supervision and coordination of eye care services among health workers which can often result in parallel services, overlap, inefficiencies, and gaps, and poor outcomes.
Acknowledging the above, the WHO World Report on Vision recommends that eye care workforce planning needs to be an integral part of health workforce planning and a competency-based care approach is required. To move this recommendation forward, the Department of Noncommunicable Diseases is seeking an individual to undertake a nine-month consultancy to address key research gaps for developing a competency framework for eye care.
The scope of work for this contract consists of the following tasks:
- Conduct a review of health-related competency frameworks, towards the development of a competency matrix for eye care.
- Evaluating the literature on eye-care workforce performance in low-resource settings.
- Draft a competency framework for eye care based on existing work conducted at the WHO workforce department and following a defined consultation process.
The WHO Headquarters Office in Geneva is now inviting eligible individuals to indicate their interest in undertaking this work. Interested parties must provide information indicating why they are qualified to perform the described tasks, including CV, description of similar assignments, experience conducting systematic reviews, and examples of relevant reports or publications. The contracting party will be selected through a competitive process in accordance with WHO’s operating policies and procedures on procurement of services.
The expected start date is 1 May 2020 (or as soon as reasonably possible after that date). The work under this consultant contract does not need to be undertaken at WHO Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, however visits may be required. The contractual party will be remunerated at a monthly rate that is commensurate with their experience and based on the UN common salary scale.
Qualifications and experiences required:
- University degree in one of the specialties of eye care;
- Advanced university degree in public health or a related field;
- Demonstrated experience with carrying out systematic literature reviews and writing technical documents;
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English; and
- Excellent interpersonal skills.
Expressions of interest must be received no later than 10:00 CET (Geneva time) on Friday 31st January 2020. Please include a copy of your CV as well as a description of similar work undertaken. Please also provide a proposal for the research, along with a budget breakdown, based on the requirements. The expressions of interest are to be delivered electronically to Alina Lashko at the following email address: lashkoa@who.int.