Mdecins Sans Frontires is a private, non-profit international humanitarian organization dedicated to providing medical assistance to populations in crisis, without discrimination and regardless of race, religion, gender, creed, or political affiliation.
We are recruiting to fill the position below: Job Title: Epidemiologist Location: Kano Employment Type: Contract
Responsibilities / Accountabilities (non-exhaustive list)
Carrying out key epidemiological activities in outbreak investigation (description including time, place, people with emphasis on mapping when it is needed) and advising on the operational response
Implementing and maintaining a surveillance system to monitor epidemiological trends of relevant outbreak-prone diseases. Guiding activities of medical staff for surveillance and/or active case finding, including ensuring understanding of the need for consistent case definitions and data recording (briefing of all new staff)
Monitoring and Implementing initial Assessment (for emergency situation), rapid health assessments and (baseline or follow-up) surveys. Where standard protocols are not available or appropriate, developing a protocol seeking extensive feedback and pilot testing of tools to ensure the objectives will be met robustly with support of HQ epidemiologist
Preparing and adapting routine documentation (survey forms, training materials, letters of request/notification, locally appropriate consent forms etc.) with support of HQ epidemiologist. Preparing an appropriate sampling frame and sample selection guidelines with support of HQ epidemiologist
Planning and supervising the associated HR processes of the staff under his/her responsibility (recruitment, training/induction, evaluation, potential detection, development and communication) and ensuring that staff exhibit required skills after training and pilot tests
Managing data systems and ensuring accurate, high-quality databases; analyzing results and preparing regular written reports on progress and findings for medical coordinator/HQ and when appropriate to external collaborators/networks (MoH, other NGOs, etc.)
Providing training sessions to medical teams on relevant aspects of epidemiology to enhance team response capacity
Specific responsibilities
Maintain the project diphtheria surveillance system based on an individual line list covering the IDH, decentralized sites, HBC and referrals, ensuring consistent use of standard case definitions, timely data entry, validation, deduplication and weekly data quality checks.
Ensure that every patient can be followed from detection to final outcome, including referrals to tertiary care, HBC follow-up visits, losses to follow-up and deaths, through record linkage and regular reconciliation between sites.
Produce daily epidemiological updates and the weekly epidemiological sitrep (trends by time, LGA and ward, age group, vaccination status, laboratory results, and case fatality computed on appropriate denominators) and maintain the project dashboard to inform operational decisions.
Map cases at ward level by place of residence, identify transmission hotspots and provide evidence for the positioning of decentralized care sites, active case finding, community surveillance and vaccination targeting.
Organize and document regular structured reviews of deaths (in facilities, after referral and in the community) with the medical team and follow up on the resulting corrective actions.
Support health promotion and community teams in community-based alert, case referral and close contact tracing, and monitor contact follow-up, prophylaxis and vaccination indicators.
Monitor sample collection, laboratory confirmation results and turnaround times, and link laboratory results to the final case classification.
Support the analysis of vaccination coverage and campaign data (target populations, denominators, coverage by ward and age group) and contribute to the planning and monitoring of vaccination activities with the MoH, KNCDC and partners.
Maintain regular data exchange and reconciliation with KNCDC, the State Epidemiologist and SORMAS, take part in surveillance and coordination meetings, and represent the project on epidemiological matters when delegated.
Supervise, train and coach data and surveillance staff, and develop and maintain SOPs, data dictionaries and analysis templates (Excel, Kobo Toolbox) so that routine outputs can be produced autonomously by the team.
Contribute to data collection and analysis for surveys and operational research conducted by the project, in line with MSF ethics requirements.
Apply MSF data protection and patient confidentiality rules to all individual data handled by the project.
Required Skills and Competencies
Education: Essential: Medical doctor (preferable), nurse or biomedical scientist with a postgraduate degree in epidemiology (MSc, or MPH with an epidemiology major), or graduate of an advanced Field Epidemiology Training Programme (NFELTP or equivalent)
Experience:
Minimum 2 years of field epidemiology experience, including outbreak investigation and response
Experience with diphtheria or other vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks is a strong asset
Working knowledge of surveillance systems in Nigeria (IDSR, SORMAS, DHIS2) and of collaboration with State MoH and NCDC structures
Experience supervising and training data or surveillance staff
Previous experience with MSF or another humanitarian organisation is an asset
Knowledge:
Advanced Excel and at least one statistical package (R preferred; Stata, Epi Info or SPSS)
Mobile data collection tools (Kobo Toolbox or ODK)
GIS mapping (QGIS) is an asset
Principles of health data protection and confidentiality
Computer Literacy: Computer proficiency (Word and Excel) is required.
Languages: English Required, Hausa strongly desirable
Competencies and Qualities: Result and quality orientation, teamwork and cooperation, behavioural flexibility, Service orientation, Stress management, and commitment to MSF Principles.