Emergency Health Specialist

Position: Emergency Health Specialist

Responsible To: Country Director/Country Health Director

Responsible For: Senior Health Coordinators /Project Medical Coordinators, HIS Coordinator and Senior Pharmacist

Works With: Country Management Team, Heath Managers

Location: Islamabad with travel to field sites

Contract Duration: 06 months

Context and Background

Merlin is the UK’s leading international health charity, sending medical experts to the frontline of global emergencies and staying on to build lasting health systems. We entered Pakistan in 2005 after an earthquake in Jammu Kashmir left 75,000 dead and hundreds of thousands homeless. Since then we have expanded to provide a wide range of primary health care, malaria control, family planning, post abortion care and nutrition services to over 2.2 million people. We currently support 110 health facilities and ten hospitals, and have scaled up in times of emergency including the devastating floods of 2010 and 2011.

In Sindh, the province which was worst affected by the floods of 2010 and hit again by severe rains in 2011, Merlin is providing health and nutrition services in Dadu, Thatta and Badin. This includes treatment centres for communicable diseases like diarrhoea, feeding programmes for severely and moderately malnourished children and vaccinations to protect children under the age of 5 from diseases such as polio.

In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, we are working in the Swat Valley, Peshawar, Buner and Nowshera districts – areas which are still confronting political instability, widespread militancy and displacement in wake of the conflict in neighbouring Afghanistan. Merlin has provided emergency healthcare to internally displaced people (IDPs) in Jalozai camp since 2009, which were scaled up at the start of 2012 following an influx of IDPs from Khyber Agency. As people return to the Swat valley, we are working with government of Pakistan to strengthen the country’s health system, including training lady health workers to provide family planning advice in an effort to stem maternal mortality

In Baluchistan, Merlin is implementing a Global fund supported malaria control programme in 10 districts and now planning to expand its health and nutrition interventions into Naseerabad and Jaffarbad districts as Baluchistan has as well consistently faced a sequence of natural and manmade catastrophes. Furthermore, with GAM rates of 16.1%, Baluchistan is confronting, based upon WHO criteria, significantly high levels of child acute malnutrition.

Main purpose of the Role

As Emergency Health Specialist, the main role will be to assist the Country Health Director in providing strategic and technical leadership to ensure the effective development and implementation of quality emergency health programmes in Pakistan.

Overall Objectives (scope)

· Provision of leadership and support to the team

· Support to Merlin teams in delivery of quality health programmes, through coordination, advice, information sharing and analysis

· In collaboration with the Country Health Director, ensure the effective implementation of Merlin emergency health programming in line with approved programme proposals and budgets.

Specific Responsibilities

General

· Co-ordinate activities between the field sites and the capital office

· Monitor and maintain compliance with standard Merlin procedures and guidelines

· Maintain a strong working relationship with other Country Management Team members. members and all technical staff

· Provide technical support to the programme ensuring capacity building and training related activities of health facility staff, Department of Health Staff, partner organizations, community health workers and the Merlin health team in order to improve health services delivery and acceptability of such services from the targeted communities.

· Coordinate, plan and implement proposed health activities in the field

Technical Program Support

· In collaboration with the Country Management Team, Project Coordinators and Health Coordinators, assist in the design and implementation of the project health activities, including changes of project direction or priorities.

· Assist in current and future assessments of health and humanitarian needs as determined by the Country Management Team

· Assist in the preparation of donor proposals and reports and other monthly/periodic reports for Merlin internal use and/or for other stakeholders in collaboration with the Country Management Team and Project Coordinators

· Establish mechanisms to provide regular updates on health activity status to local/provincial Ministry of Health, including feedback on Health Information Systems statistics to the Merlin Staff, epidemiological surveillance, and to ensure that Health Information Systems are appropriately used as a management tool

· Assist in preparing project medical protocols and data collection tools as required in collaboration with Ministry of Health/Department of Health representatives and ensure the team is fully conversant with and trained in the same

· Assist in designing and implementing monitoring and evaluation mechanisms in close collaboration with Country Health Director

Logistics/ Finance/ Administration/HR

· Ensure medical supplies are managed appropriately in the programme sites

· Identify and prepare essential medical supplies in collaboration with the Country Management Team and Project Medical Coordinators/Senior Health Coordinators

· Manage medical stocks such as timely preparation and approval of all medical orders, monitoring of drug consumption etc.

· In close coordination with HRM, fill in the technical positions by other means of recruitment, i.e., head hunting etc.

Communication/ Representation

· Support the CHD’s strategic co-operation initiatives with the MoH, and at other help forums

· Coordinate health activities within the project sites in close collaboration with other members of the Merlin medical team to ensure objectives are achieved and resources are well utilised

· Represent Merlin at provincial/national level with involved stakeholders (Ministry of Health, UN organizations, NGO), when required

Requirements (Person Specification)

• Medical doctor (with PMDC valid registration) preference will be given to those candidates who have MPH degree
• Minimum 07 years’ experience in Public Health and at least 3 years’ experience of managing Emergency Health programmes as well as in management/coordination position with international organisations/agencies/UN agency;
• Strong interpersonal skills and ability to effectively work in a multi-cultural environment;

• Fluent spoken and written English and Urdu

• Effective problem analysis and problem solving skills;
• Understanding of security management and willing to live and work within difficult and remote environments, including conflict affected areas (Sindh, FATA, DIK, Bannu, Malakand Division and Balochistan)
• Proven training and capacity building skills

Desirable:

• First-hand knowledge of the area
• Experience of donor liaison
• Where relevant, multi-language skills.