Epidemiologist (4)

Job Summary

To support the Ministry of Health and Baylor Foundation Uganda in strengthening the integrated health care package (surveillance at community and facility levels, Acute febrile illness, IPC) and in supporting the coordination role at REOC. The officer will contribute to the timely detection, notification, verification, and analysis of deaths to inform public health actions.

Overall Responsibilities

1. Data Management and Analysis Through the Regional Emergency Operations Centre (REOC)

• Collect, validate, and clean surveillance data from community and health facility sources.
• Submit timely reports and dashboards to the REOC and national task forces.
• Participate in REOC coordination meetings and contribute to response strategies
• Ensure integration of mortality data into national surveillance systems (DHIS2, EWARN, etc.).
• Support data triangulation with case surveillance and burial team reports.
• Build the capacity of REOC on the timely development and dissemination of information products.
• Participate in record/data reviews to identify priority disease pathogens and take necessary action.

2. Regional and District Coordination & Capacity Strengthening

• Work with REOC to support the regional coordination mechanism
• Conduct Bi-weekly epidemic intelligence meetings
• Liaise with district surveillance officers, laboratory teams, burial teams, IPC focal persons, and other stakeholders for coordinated response.
• Contribute to documentation of lessons learned and best practices for future outbreak responses.
• Participate in surveillance review meetings and capacity-building activities.
• Work with REOC to coordinate deployment of regional rapidly deployable teams during response activities.
• Work with REOC to coordinate signal verification in the region
• Work with REOC to ensure early action reviews are completed for all confirmed public health events and the 7-1-7 tracker is updated.
• Coordinate and supervise the implementation of the Epidemic Ready Primary Health Care model in the health facilities in the respective regions/district(s)

3. Community Mortality Surveillance

• Support training and supervision of community health workers (CHWs) on death notification and verbal autopsy processes.
• Coordinate community-based reporting of deaths and suspected SVD-related fatalities.
• Facilitate community engagement and awareness activities to improve death reporting.
• Ensure timely investigation and documentation of all reported community deaths.
• Work with local leaders and VHTs to verify and trace reported community deaths.

4. Health Facility Mortality: Mortality Surveillance Using Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI)

• Provide technical guidance to health facility staff on accurate medical certification of cause of death (MCCoD).
• Support implementation of CQI approaches to enhance surveillance data accuracy, completeness, and timeliness.
• Facilitate regular death review meetings in health facilities.
• Mentor health facility staff on the use of ICD-10 codes for death reporting.
• Monitor and report on gaps in facility mortality surveillance and propose actionable improvements.

5. Acute febrile illness surveillance:

• Work with REOC to monitor AFI performance in the region
• Conduct supportive supervision/targeted mentorships to poorly performing sites.
• Support in AFI data analysis and sharing

6. Alert management

• Support districts and VHTs in detection, triaging, and verification of public health signals from routine and event-based surveillance data, community-based reports, and inter-sectoral sources in accordance with national event-based surveillance protocols.
• Apply epidemiological thresholds and statistical signal detection methods to differentiate true public health events from background noise, and escalate validated alerts to appropriate authorities within stipulated timeframes.
• Conduct rapid risk assessments for verified alerts, coordinating with district, regional, and national stakeholders to characterise the event and initiate proportionate response actions.
• Maintain a comprehensive alert log documenting signal sources, investigation findings, response actions taken, and outcomes, ensuring data quality and completeness for accountability and after-action review.

7. POE/border health surveillance

• Support districts in coordinating systematic screening of travellers
• Strengthen IPC and screening at POEs
• Coordinate POPCAB and ZooCABs, risk assessments, etc

Required Qualification, Experience and Competencies:

• Qualifications and Experience
  • Bachelor’s degree in medicine, Public Health, or related field;
  • Master’s in Epidemiology, Public Health, or related field.
  • Training in field Epidemiology is an added advantage.
  • At least 3-5 years of experience in regional/district programming, public health programming, surveillance, outbreak response/management, epidemiology, etc..
  • Experience in project cycle management
  • Experience in setting up surveillance systems, mortality surveillance, verbal autopsy, or death certification processes.

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