Programme Assistant to support General Department of Preventive Medicine on monitoring AEFI

Job Title: VN015 - Programme Assistant to support General Department of Preventive Medicine on monitoring AEFI in expanded immunization program, vaccines against COVID-19 in this biennium program 2022-2023

I. Background:

National Expanded Program on Immunization (NEPI) has been one of long-standing health programs in Vietnam implementing free and basic vaccinations for young children to prevent dangerous and easily transmitted diseases such as tuberculosis, diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus, Hepatitis B, Hib, Measles, Rubella. WHO has provided support for immunization activities including routine immunization and campaign planning and implementation, technical guidelines developments, as well as VPDs surveillance as a back bone to provide evidence for immunization program planning and implementation. To maintain immunization activities as an essential health service including VPDs surveillances is critically important to detect any resurgence or epidemics and respond to such events especially of outbreak-prone VPDs such as measles during COVID-19.

Vietnam deployed a large COVID-19 vaccination campaign since Mar 2021. As of May 22, 2022, Vietnam has received a total of about 223 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines. Up to 9 June, 222,610,562 injections were administered nationwide, the coverage of dose 1 is 86,2%; dose 2 reached 79,3% of the total population. There are 68,8 million adults, 8,5 million children aged 12-17 and 0.67 million children aged 5-11 have been fully vaccinated the vaccine. The focus of next steps is to continue to reach the unreached population with primary dose, improving the coverage of booster dose, particularly for high-risk groups, improving the coverage of COVID-19 vaccination for children aged 5-11 and catching up children who missed routine vaccination in 2020-2021 that are the highest priorities.

The Department of Preventive Medicine is the central agency in charge of managing the use of vaccines nationwide, responsible for guiding the use of vaccines, immunization and monitoring of vaccination safety; performs the function of monitoring vaccination safety under the National Vaccine Administration (NRA) and permanent member of the Advisory Council on the use of vaccines of the Ministry of Health and AEFI causality assessment for professional advisory committee of the Ministry of Health. Especially COVID-19 vaccine, Ministry of Health Viet Nam have worked very closely with related agencies and contributed a lot for ensuring all ongoing works and missions of COVID-19 vaccine deployment.

The parallel implementation of dual goals must both make efforts to well implement routine immunization, maintain a high vaccination coverage for children and urgently deploy a vaccination campaign of COVID-19 for the whole population safely and effectively to respond to epidemic prevention is very difficult. In addition, human resources at the national level were also overloaded.

In order to meet the huge workload with many jobs with deep expertise, while human resources limited, GDPM sent a request to WHO for providing support to recruit one technical staff who will work for General Department of Preventive Medicine on monitoring AEFI in expanded immunization program, vaccines against COVID-19 in this biennium program 2022-2023.

Therefore, WHO representative office of Viet Nam commences SSA to provide support to GDPM to well deploy COVD-19 vaccine strategies and to effectively coordinate supports by WHO in the biennium from 2022-2023.

II. Work to be performed

Support for monitoring AEFI (EPI vaccines, COVID-19 vaccine)
Synthesize information about AEFI globally
Monitor and follow up data collection and information related to AEFI in Vietnam
Support to develop periodic and ad-hoc reports related to AEFI in Vietnam;
Participating in inspection team in order to guidance and evaluate AEFI in provinces;
Support to develop legal documents, professional guidelines and directive documents related to AEFI
Support in organizing training for AEFI causality assessment for provincial professional advisory committee and other workshop, trainings related to AEFI
Participating in organizing meetings of AEFI causality assessment for MoH professional advisory committee, supporting the implementation of the Council's conclusions after the meeting.
Support to collect comments and feedback from other units about AEFI and propose solutions;
Support to develop database related to AEFI; implements and reports the AEFI monitoring function (VL) under the NRA.
Coordinate with relevant international and domestic organizations related to AEFI
Implement other activities as assigned at the General Department of Preventive Medicine.
Report on the progress of implementing tasks and perform other tasks at the request of the Leaders of the Department, Leaders of the Division of Vaccine and Biosafety Management

The main methods to carry out the work

Communication with regions, provinces and relevant departments of GDPM and MOH as well as WHO
Preparation and submissions of documents to GDPM leadership, MOH and WHO

III. Specific requirements

a. Education: Bachelor's degree or post-graduate related to medicine or public health.

b. Experience

Minimum 3 years of experience in the medical field; experience in implementing activities related to infectious disease prevention, immunization
Experience in preventive medicine: support to work in infectious disease prevention/immunization, use of vaccines, monitoring of AEFI.
Desired: Experience working with the MOH, WHO.

c. Skills

Ability to work under pressure and to tight deadlines.
Good teamwork skill
Ability to work independently.
Ability to coordinate and work with domestic and foreign partners.
Good computer skill.
Have monitoring and evaluation skill.
Have report writing and presentation skill.

d. Language

Essential: Proficiency in English in writing and speaking, and expert knowledge of Vietnamese

e. Competencies

Producing results
Communicating in a credible and effective way
Fostering integration and teamwork

IV. Place of assignment

Division of Vaccine and Biosafety Management, General Department of Preventive Medicine, Ministry of Health

V. Budget

Please take note of the following when submitting application: The contractor will be responsible for paying taxes, if any.

Those who are interested can submit your most updated CV and application letter indicating post title and vacancy notice # by 30 June 2022 and should be addressed to: