Ajira Portal:- International consultant to Strengthen the Health Human Resources Ecosystem at UNICEF September 2024

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

For every child, commitment

The Revolutionary government of Zanzibar is committed to strengthening the government’s delivery capacity to achieve an “Economic Revolution”. To accelerate progress towards achieving this objective, the Presidential Delivery Bureau hosted a health delivery hub in March 2023 expedite the   implementation of its Zanzibar Development Plan (ZADEP 2021-2026), which is aligned with the Zanzibar Development Vision (ZDV) 2050. The delivery bureau focused on the five key presidential priority areas: health commodity management, infrastructure, health workforce, health financing, and health information.

The Zanzibar Health Sector Strategic Plan IV (HSSPIV 2020/21-2024/25) recognizes the importance of improving the health workforce in terms of the skills, numbers and distribution, motivation, and management focusing on performance and achieving results as one of the cornerstones to achieving the health sector transformation.

To accelerate progress toward improving service delivery through stronger human resources for health (HRH), the Ministry of Health (MOH) convened development partners and developed a joint HRH roadmap which included the revision of the HRH staffing level and medium-term HRH costing. In 2023, UNICEF worked closely with the MOH to review the staffing norms and estimate the gap and resources needed to fully staff the health sector over the next 5 years. As part of the efforts to strengthen the human resources policy environment and management practices, UNICEF will collaborate with the MoH Zanzibar on updating and finalizing the HRH staffing norms and HRH costing, development of a Human Resources for Health Strategy and Human Resources for Health Toolkit.

How can you make a difference?

Scope of Work: 

Given the significant developments recently realized in the health sector, the time is ripe for the development of an HRH strategy and toolkit. Developments include a major revision of Primary Healthcare through health facility recategorization, the transformation of the Community Health Volunteers to Community Health Workers, the construction of additional hospitals, including a regional hospital and specialized centers, and the outsourcing of certain services and functions at the district, regional, and tertiary hospitals. These reforms impact HRH’s quantity, distribution, training, and costs and rely on a policy environment that effectively guides their work.

The assignment will contribute to the availability of the updated HRH strategic documents which are critical in strengthening the health workforce and the attainment of Zanzibar’s overall goal of attaining universal health coverage.

The MOH Senior Management will use the evidence generated through this assignment to advocate for increased resource allocation to the health sector, formalize the response to the ever-increasing demand on HRH, and address workforce management, planning, and administration capacity and training issues.

Objectives

This consultancy aims to answer the following three questions:

• What are the optimal staff distribution benchmarks to deliver quality health services in Zanzibar?

• What strategies should the MOH pursue to respond to the ever-increasing demand for Human

Resources for Health?

• How can the MOH address the existing issues related to workforce management, planning,

administration capacity issues, and training?

WORK ASSIGNMENT, DELIVERABLES, TIME FRAME AND PAYMENT 

Work Assignments Overview	Deliverables/Outputs	Delivery deadline	Payment schedule (TZS)
Review, analyze, and finalize the MOH staffing database, including the central Level	• Updated MOH staffing database, including the central level	15/11/2024	8%
Prepare staffing distribution benchmarks reflecting the new health facility recategorization	Staffing distribution benchmarks model and application	30/11/2024	5%
Undertake a gap analysis between the staffing distribution benchmarks and current distribution of health workers and estimate the resources needed to fill this gap	Gap analysis and costing report	15/12/2024	5%
Present the results to the Government of Zanzibar for Validation	Revised final consolidated project report and presentation to UNICEF and government of Zanzibar	30/12/2024	5%
Human Resources for Health Strategy
Inception report	Detailed inception report and presentation to UNICEF and MOH detailing the methodology, 15/01/2024 5% stakeholders’ engagement plans and implementation timeline	15/01/2025	5%
Comprehensive assessment of the HRH policy environment	Comprehensive HRH assessment report and presentation outlining the HRH situation in Zanzibar. • Report presentation to the HRH TWG	15/02/2025	12%
Stakeholders’ consultation on the Identification of priority strategies	• Report from stakeholders’ consultation	28/02/2025	5%
Comprehensive HRH Strategy	Draft HRH Strategy submitted to UNICEF and presented to HRH TWG	30/03/2025	11%
Dissemination and validation of the HRH Strategy	Final HRH Strategy submitted to UNICEF and summary presented to MOH TWG and management	30/04/2025	7%
Human Resources for Health Toolkit
Develop the HRH toolkit encompassing all key HRH processes	Draft HRH Toolkit presented to MOH HRH TWG for input and approval	15/05/2025	18%
Incorporate the input from TWG to finalize the Toolkit	Final HRH toolkit	30/05/2025	7%
Toolkit, Validation, Dissemination	Dissemination of the Toolkit among MOH officials for feedback and validation	15/06/2025	4%
Training of MOH Staff	• Training report summary	30/07/2025	7%

PAYMENT SCHEDULE.
UNICEF reserves the right to withhold all or portion of payment if performance is unsatisfactory, if work/output is incomplete, not delivered or for failure to meet deadlines.

ASSESSMENT / SELECTION PROCESS AND METHODS
Evaluations: The applicant should submit both technical and financial proposals which clearly stipulate how the work will be conducted. The Financial Proposal should include all costs of this assignment including fee, travel costs, accommodation as UNICEF will not pay any DSA.

Proposals will be both technically and financially evaluated. The technical part will carry a weight of 75%, in which the consultant will put clear his/her technical approach to ensure quality attainment of each deliverable and the consultancy in totality. The financial part will take 25% showing the proposed budget breakdown of consultancy cost for each deliverable (fees, travel, and accommodation) and eventual total consultancy cost.

LOCATION, DURATION & LOGISTIC
The consultancy is expected to be for 10.5 months with some travels to Zanzibar. The consultant will be expected to be based in Zanzibar and will be embedded at the Ministry of Health.

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

• Master’s in public health, Health Services Management, Health
• A minimum of 10 years of experience working on human
• resources for health management.
• Knowledge of Human Resource dynamics, policy and planning.
• Fluency in written and spoken English essential.
• knowledge of Swahili is an asset.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF’s values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability, and Sustainability (CRITAS).

To view our competency framework, please visit  here.

UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

Remarks: 

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures, and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully-vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.