VACCINATION OFFICER

Field-based position covering French-speaking projects (e.g. Niger, Burkina Faso, DRC, Cameroon).

Context & Mission

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international humanitarian aid organization that provides assistance in more than 60 countries to populations in distress, to victims of natural or manmade disasters, and to victims of armed conflicts, without discrimination and irrespective of religion, creed, or political affiliation.

As recently stated by the DirMed platform, our field projects are optimized where there is a strong medico-operational collaboration, where technical advisors can contribute not only to technical questions, but also to the development of program planning and project objectives. Regular input by technical referents in project design would improve delivery of quality services.

Vaccination has always been one of the essential components of MSF interventions in emergencies. Nevertheless, implementation of routine vaccination activities in all relevant MSF programs was only set as an international operational priority in 2009. Since then, integrated routine vaccination has slowly made its way to becoming more the norm in the projects, although it is often not seen as a priority and sometimes poorly supervised by the medical team leader and medical coordinator at field and coordination levels.

Reactive mass vaccination campaigns remain one of the core activities in vaccination. In 2015, MSF OCG (Operational Center Geneva), and then all MSF sections, started implementing multi-antigens preventive vaccination campaigns as a new strategy to mitigate the disastrous effects of poor Extended Program of Immunization (EPI) over time, especially in chronic crises (Niger 2015, CAR 2016, Chad 2016).

This position will oversee implementation of the vaccination package in the field.

Tasks and Responsibilities

The following elements are the essential components of this position:

• Provide field-based implementation support for vaccination in all relevant MSF OCG projects.
• Focus on essential components for vaccination – to be defined in detail for each project:
  • Global understanding of the national vaccination strategy (national vaccination policy, pluri-annual plan, joint appraisals and country engagement framework, national and WUENIC vaccination coverage survey, etc.).
  • Understanding of the mission’s vaccination strategy and activities.
  • Performing a vaccination gap assessment at local level, and propose relevant activities (at hospital level, at health center level, in the community).
  • Understand and propose pertinent action for preventive/reactive campaigns, including E-prep.
• Pay special attention to catch-up vaccination activities and vaccination of specific groups: malnourished, people living with HIV, pregnant women, wounded, patients with functional asplenia (e.g. sickle cell disease), post-exposure prophylaxis, staff, etc.
• Assess quality of cold chain, waste management, sterility and hygiene during standard procedures of vaccination practice.
• Discuss and share adapted basic messages on vaccination activities for the health promotion team.
• Support to the MedCo/MTL for negotiations with local authorities for specific vaccination activities/topics.
• Ensure use of MSF vaccination guidance, including Standard List, indicators list, reporting tools, supervision grids, training tools, vaccination guidelines, and specific MSF OCG policies on vaccination.
• Field-based trainings for staff improved for vaccination activities, in collaboration with the Vaccination Advisor and L&D.
• Introduce “Community of Practice” (CoP) for vaccination in collaboration with L&D (in charge of the organization/animation).
• Help implementation of the E-vacci tool (whenever available/requested).

Your Profile

Education

• Degree in a medical or paramedical profession (MD, nurse, paramedic) or in Epidemiology

Experience

• Min. 2 years’ experience working in resource-limited settings, in particular in humanitarian contexts
• Min. 1 year’s field-based experience with MSF in settings with relevant vaccination components would be an asset
• Working experience in health activities at community level would be an asset
• Experience in providing clinical/organizational trainings to adult learners / continuing education.
• Comfortable with IT tools (Excel, DHIS2)
• Experience in EPI program would be an asset

Languages

• Fluent in English (written and spoken),
• Arabic a strong asset

Skills

• A high degree of autonomy, managerial and organizational capacity, and flexibility is required
• Ability to coordinate several field vaccination officers’ interactions and lead/promote exchange and discussions
• Ability to formalize and synthetize findings in reports
• Practical experience in vaccination activities (routine and outbreaks) with MSF or EPI
• Ability to work with diverse field teams
• Computer literacy and advanced use of Ms Office tools, Excel in particular
• Knowledgeable in MSF data collection, DHIS2, pharmacy and medical orders tools

Personal Abilities

• Good communication skills
• Ability to travel and work with multidisciplinary and multicultural teams

Terms of Employment

• Fixed-term contract, 12 months
• Full-Time, 100%
• Working place: Field-based position covering French-speaking projects (e.g. Niger, Burkina Faso, DRC, Cameroon).
• Practical working conditions in the field are in accordance with the MSF OCG volunteer manual.
• Ideal start date: March 1st 2023
• Gross monthly salary: CHF 5’500.- based on 100%
• Benefits: Health insurance and living expenses in the countries of intervention and at headquarters, paid according to internal regulations.