Consultant (#VN038) (WHO)

WHO is seeking for a Short-term Consultant to support the General Department of Preventive Medicine for developing Sodium benchmarks for some processed food categories

1. Background

Eating too much salt is bad for health. Studies have linked excess sodium intake to cardiovascular diseases like high blood pressure, heart attacks and strokes. Excessive consumption of salt also is an important risk factor of stomach cancer, renal failure, other health disorders.

The NCD risk factor survey (STEPS) in 2015 showed that Vietnamese adults consume on average 9.4g of salt per day, almost twice the World Health Organization's recommendation (no more than 5g of salt per day). In addition, people’s knowledge and practice to reduce the harmful effects of excessive salt intake is still very limited. The survey also shows that Vietnamese people tend to consume more and more processed foods, especially at school age. One of the major health challenges is identifying ways to help consumers reduce salt in processed food. One of the important measures is to develop recommendations for maximum/target salt content in 100g of food. This method will encourage businesses and manufacturers to apply measures to reduce salt in recipes. They can replace sodium with other spices to produce foods with less sodium.

For that reason, the General Department of Preventive Medicine (GDPM)- Ministry of Health requested WHO to support for developing Sodium benchmarks for some processed food categories. The support includes a consultant to assist the GDPM with the task. The recruited consultant will lead the working group established by the GDPM to provide inputs for consultation meetings. The consultant will also support the GDPM facilitate for consultations and then lead the working group to finalize related documents according to comments.

2. Planned timelines

Start date: August 2023
End date: December 2023

3. Work to be performed

Deliverable 1: Report on review of food groups in Vietnam, compared with the WHO classification in the recommendations on salt intake benchmark.
Deliverable 2: Report on the overview of the trends in consumption of popular processed and packaged foods in Vietnam, based on existing studies, including the collection of data from relevant departments and sectors.
Deliverable 3: Draft on requested types of food for recommendations about sodium benchmarks for some processed food categories in Vietnam.
Deliverable 4: Propose a list of products to be collected for random salt content testing.
Deliverable 5: Draft and finalize documents and national recommendations about sodium benchmarks for some processed food categories in Vietnam. The documents include:
- The material for the meeting: agenda, discussion paper, meeting minutes.
- Translations of related documents from English into Vietnamese and Vietnamese into English.
- The first draft and revised draft after meetings based on comments from WHO and members of MOH’s drafting committee and consolidated with note of comments.
- A list of related documents to support the recommendation for approval by MOH; The final draft for approval.

4. Specific requirements

Educational Qualifications:

Mater degree in medicine/Preventive Medicine/Public Health.

Experience:

At least 10 years of experience in the field of nutrition.
Experience in literature review and policy drafting
Experience in review and research of food consumption patterns in the population
Have capacity to build relationships or recommend the relevant stakeholders to take part the work
Experience in statistics and epidemiology
Experience working with MOH and international partners.
Good knowledge and skills in drafting state documents, developing plans and writing reports. Priority will be given to those who have participated in the development of nutrition labeling policies/national nutrition strategies.

Language proficiency: