Malaria Consortium is hiring a Consultant.
Malaria Consortium is one of the world’s leading non-profit organisations dedicated to the comprehensive control of malaria and other communicable diseases and child health in Africa and Southeast Asia. Malaria Consortium works with communities, government and non-government agencies, academic institutions, and local and international organisations, to ensure good evidence supports delivery of effective services, providing technical support for monitoring and evaluation of programmes and activities for evidence-based decision-making and strategic planning. The organisation works to improve not only the health of the individual, but also the capacity of national health systems, which helps relieve poverty and support improved economic prosperity.
Malaria Consortium secured funds from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) at the end of June 2019, to support the National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP) to strengthen the malaria surveillance system that is capable of guiding strategic and operational decision-making based on accurate, granular and timely surveillance data across all transmission strata in Mozambique.
In order to ensure data is at the centre of decision making and surveillance is set as a key intervention to guide malaria control and elimination activities, the National Malaria Control Program (NMCP) has prioritized data driven decision making in the 2017-2022 National Malaria Control Strategic Plan (NSP). The NMCP’s goal focuses on strengthening the surveillance system to ensure all health facilities (HFs) report quality data that inform decision making. To achieve this, a fundamental transformation is required so that high quality data is not only generated but also effectively used and leads to adequate action across all service provider levels. To this end, together with partners, CHAI, CISM and Goodbye Malaria, the investment will focus on strengthening data quality (DQ), as well as establishing and institutionalizing a data use (DU) and data-to-action (D2A) culture across all service provider levels. This investment will also establish an iMISS that will improve quality of data, facilitate better management of malaria-related data and will ensure that the bottlenecks and challenges identified in the 2018 country-wide malaria surveillance assessment are adequately addressed.
Malaria transmission is heterogeneous in Mozambique, both across different Provinces and within a Province, although generally, transmission is higher in the north and lowest in the most southern Province that borders South Africa and Swaziland. Different interventions are required depending on whether the target is to achieve malaria control or elimination across the different transmission strata and surveillance data collected and used will also need to reflect these differences. Development of a strong surveillance system requires a multi-pronged approach to strengthen the existing passive surveillance system, as well as reorientation of program activities in areas of very low transmission to incorporate active surveillance in areas moving towards elimination. This system will then be able to provide the necessary intelligence to identify bottlenecks in malaria control and elimination, drive more efficiently targeted interventions, and respond where the impact of program activities is jeopardized.
Within the project, three surveillance packages were created to guide optimal operationalisation of surveillance activities and embed them into day-to-day data reporting, DU, and D2A activities across all transmission strata. The three packages consist of a standard package, a standard plus package, and an intensive package that are described below:
The standard plus and intensive packages will be realized in a total of 16 districts across 5 Provinces and Maputo City, representing all different transmission levels and current malaria control interventions.
The creation of a sustainable at-scale surveillance system will, therefore, be based on evaluating the feasibility and acceptability of these packages, documenting best practice, sharing lessons learnt and supporting the institutionalization of accountability mechanisms.
An adaptive learning approach is being used to supplement the more project driven quality improvement process and aid in applying and embedding the process within the national health system.
Whereby, lessons learnt from the intensive and standard plus packages will be used to inform improvements in the standard and standard plus packages so that by the end of the project, a compilation of appropriate guidance and tools will be available, a minimum set of resources required and the associated costs will be known to inform scale-up.
To support the evaluation of these components a cost analysis comparing the three main intervention packages is needed. This assessment will augment the learning process, providing more contextual information on the health system and barriers to uptake of malaria surveillance activities.
These terms of reference are to recruit consultant(s) or team for conducting the overall costing analyses exercise, as described in detail below.
A cost analysis is required to inform the NMCP of the expected costs that will be required to roll out the different packages at scale across the various transmission strata. It will also seek to determine, the added value of different surveillance activities/packages in the improvement of data quality, data reporting and data use.
Under this consultancy, a comprehensive database to capture all costs, by cost category and activities (e.g. materials, trainings, meetings, feedback mechanisms, etc) will be developed for each intervention package. In addition, a special emphasis will be given to the frequency of each of these interventions and its associated effects on the measured outcomes of the project (e.g. proportion of health facilities reporting timely, accurate and complete malaria data). Once the costing tool has been developed by the consultant, it will be filled within 2-3 weeks by the project team. Upon collection of field data, the consultant will be responsible for analysing these data and develop a full report within 10 days.
Work Station: Remote
Duration for the assignment: Full consultancy is expected to take approximately 20 days over a period of 5 to 6 weeks.
Starting Date: 15 June 2021
Fees: 450 USD per day (not negotiable)
The consultant will liaise with the Chief of Party throughout this consultancy. Meetings will be held remotely with project staff to understand the information to be collected and inform the design of the database using either Excel or Access software. Wherever possible dropdown lists and automatic generation of calculations should be included. The consultant will then provide a dummy run on the use of the database, provide guidelines and train indicated Malaria Consortium staff on how to use the database. The consultant will also be required to be available for troubleshooting support or database modifications during the consultancy period.
How to apply:
Interested candidates are requested to submit cover letter and a CV to a.roca@malariaconsortium.org
Deadline for applications: Wednesday 19th May 2021
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