Epidemiologist & Disease Modelling Specialist - Pretoria, South Africa - World Health Organization

World Health Organization

Verified Company

Pretoria, South Africa

1 week ago

Posted by:

Thabo Mthembu

beBee Recruiter

Description

Grade:
P4

Contractual Arrangement:
Fixed-term appointment

Contract Duration (Years, Months, Days): 2 Years

Job Posting:
May 11, 2023, 5:10:41 AM

Closing Date:
Jun 1, 2023, 4:59:00 PM

Primary Location:
South Africa-Pretoria

Organization:
AF/EPR Emergency Preparedness and Response

Schedule:
Full-time

OBJECTIVES OF THE PROGRAMME
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.

PURPOSE OF THE POSITION
The Health Emergency Information and Risk Assessment (HIR) is a Programme Area of the Emergency Preparedness and Response (EPR)

Cluster at WHO AFRO.

The overall mandate of the HIR unit is to develop public health intelligence and risk assessment for early detection of public health events, strengthen epidemiological surveillance and improve data and information systems, for member states to rapidly mitigate the impact of public health crises.

The HIR unit leads the implementation of the "Transforming African Surveillance Systems" (TASS) flagship program which is structured around five key pillars:

Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) implementation, data and information management, workforce development, policy dialogue & advocacy and predictable and sustainable financing.

The HIR unit is in the process of reviewing, developing, and adapting several electronic tools to improve detection of public health events, data access, data management, data analytics and data use for emergency preparedness and response.

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.

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

Propose an optimized approach for surveillance using PCR tools, sequencing/genomic methods efficiently
Establish partnership with epidemiologists, first line testing clinics and laboratory staff in order to bridge public health needs with laboratory constraints
Develop a technical guidance on sampling strategy for molecular, sequencing and genomic surveillance within the WHO/AFRO.
Provide guidance for specific groups to be targeted for comprehensive surveillance.
Provide guidance for an optimized lab requisition that captures metadata needed for epidemiological studies within the laboratory information systems (LIS) capacity and maintaining ease of use by first-line healthcare providers.
Contribute to building capacity with novel methods within Member States and WHO for surveillance.
Set up and update a mapping of sampling strategy being used by Member States in the African region
Perform any other task related to pathogen genomic surveillance upon request of the supervisor.
Establish early warning systems for epidemic and pandemic-prone diseases for early detection and response to public health events of national and international concern
Conduct real-time analysis of IDSR weekly reports, outbreak intelligence data on infectious diseases, for epidemic forecasting and detection
Provide technical expertise to develop cross-border plans and programmes for strengthening epidemiological and laboratory surveillance system for prevention and control of disease with epidemic and pandemic potentials in accordance with IHR 2005
In-depth analysis and visualization, exploratory analysis, patterns extraction (machine leaning, data mining) and modeling of historical outbreak data, DVA, and IDSR datasets
Disease specific in-depth data analysis and hotspot analysis and mapping, space-time analysis (e.g cholera, yellow fewer, ) based on patterns
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
Develop automated tools to extract information and learn from the large volumes of outbreak datasets, public health intelligence generated data and risk assessment data collect