WHO consultancy: Providing technical support on vaccine, immunization policy and strategic planning financing in Cairo, Egypt

Apply for a health economics consultancy with the WHO in Egypt to provide technical support on issues relating to vaccine, immunization policy and strategic planning financing. The assignment starts on October 1, 2024. The closing date for applications is September 16, 2024. 

Background

The vaccine and immunization landscape is increasingly becoming more complex, with fewer resources. The WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region is made of 22 countries: 6 High income countries, 9 non-Gavi eligible Middle-Income countries and 7 Gavi eligible countries. This heterogeneity is further compounded by the fact that almost 50% of the countries in the region have a humanitarian crisis. Within this context, resource mobilisation is key, and any mobilised resources have to be managed with tact to yield the highest impact.

The presence of a health economist in the IVP team will increase the effectiveness of the Regional and Country offices in the area of vaccine and immunization. The candidate is expected to have demonstrated knowledge of health economics, health sector financing, routine immunization programmes, vaccine preventable diseases and the global health financing architecture, coupled with proven ability to think independently and strategically plan, coordinate, and support implementation of health programme interventions.

Immunization financing is important for ensuring supply chain sustainability and so, monitoring immunization financing trend especially by public funding is important. This person will help in collecting such data and analysis in collaboration with counterparts in WHO headquarters and partners. Increasing number of countries are requesting support for developing their National Immunization Strategy (NIS) which will be done in the next one – two years. Such an expert (health economist) will be quite handy in these exercises.

Work to be performed

Output 1: Provide support to National Immunization Technical Advisory Groups (NITAGs) to make evidence-based recommendations

• Deliverable 1.1: Support the roll out of the health economics module developed by the Global NITAG Network (GNN)
• Deliverable 1.2: Support NITAGs to gather economic evidence from literature and research institutes on any ongoing policy questions
• Deliverable 1.3: Support NITAGs in collaboration with other partners/agencies to conduct cost effectiveness and impact analysis for any ongoing policy questions

Output 2: Finalize National Immunization Strategy (NIS) costing and budgeting

• Deliverable 2.1: Support and complete cost and resource estimates and consequently budgeting for countries developing NIS using NIS.Cost/Integrated Health Tool (IHT)/other tools
• Deliverable 2.2:  Support countries to organize and coordinate NIS budget dialogue and resource mapping
• Deliverable 2.3: Support review of country-specific budget structure and public finance management (PFM) system to identify relevant budget lines for immunization specific expenditures and monitor possible PFM bottlenecks to financing of immunization

Output 3: Track and review expenditure on vaccine and immunization

• Deliverable 3.1: Support expenditure on vaccine and immunization tracking to report to Joint Reporting Form (JRF)
• Deliverable 3.2: For countries with recent health accounts, support engagement with health accounts team to review differences in reported expenditure data and improve reporting moving forward
• Deliverable 3.3: Support improving how policy makers access and use immunization budget and expenditure data as evidence for decision-making and advocacy to support adequate budget allocations to immunization as per proposed strategy.