Internship – HIV- Data management and knowledge sharing intern (3 Months), WCARO, Dakar Senegal

Job Number: 525700

Locations: Africa: Senegal

Work Type : Internship

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.

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Background

West and Central Africa (WCA) is home to about 6 percent of the world’s population and bears the second highest burden of the global HIV epidemic, with one-third of the new infections in children and adolescents globally occurring in WCA. More than four decades into the HIV epidemic, three out of four of the 500,000 children aged 0-14 living with HIV in WCA are still not receiving life-saving antiretroviral therapy (ART) because the majority have not yet been tested for HIV. In WCA, only 2 out of 10 children in need of HIV testing received it within the first 2 months of life. The region’s coverage of ART among children living with HIV (26%) is the second lowest in the world. Without antiretroviral treatment, up to 50 percent of HIV-infected children will die by their second birthday, with peak mortality at 3 to 4 months of age.

At the mid-point of implementation of the Dakar Call-to-Action, the coverage rate of antiretrovirals in pregnant and lactating women has stagnated at around 48 percent, while the coverage rate for antiretroviral therapy in children has increased by 40 percent in three years and that of early HIV testing in children has increased by 61 percent. This progress remains insufficient in relation to the 2020 targets.

There is hope given that 26 countries renewed their commitment to the Dakar Call-to-Action at the High-Level Meeting held in January 2019. Critical actions to be undertaken as part of this renewed commitment are:

1. Support of the national roll-out of Family HIV Testing;
2. Use of modern HIV testing techniques, such as the combined HIV-Syphilis test in the minimum prenatal consultation package and Point of Care (PoC) technologies;
3. The adoption and scaling up of task-shifting in support of the decentralization of HIV services and their effective integration into maternal, neonatal, child and adolescent health programs and services; and,
4. Support of the roll out of combination strategies for retention of mother-baby pairs in care

The POC project is in the inception phase and the Laboratory assessment to support the integration of POC technologies in national systems for early infant diagnosis and viral load monitoring will be conducted in Cohort 1 countries (Mali, Chad, Ghana and Nigeria) in July. On the other side, four country offices are ready to implement the roll out of HIV family testing (CAR, Ghana, Cameroon and Burkina Faso) and three of them (CAR, Ghana and Cameroon) have already experience on family testing at small scale.

How can you make a difference?

Objectives

1. Support data collection, analysis, and knowledge sharing on the National Roll-Out of Family HIV Testing in 4 countries: CAR, Ghana, Cameroon, and Burkina Faso.
2. Establish and maintain an electronic filing system to support the knowledge management on the HIV point-of-care (POC) WCA project in cohort 1 countries (Mali, Chad, Ghana, and Nigeria) and the National Roll-Out of HIV Family Testing in 4 countries: CAR, Ghana, Cameroon and Burkina Faso.
3. Support in the content development and maintenance of the WCARO HIV Share Point site.

Scope of work

The intern will provide direct programmatic and administrative support to the HIV section in information & data collection, analysis, and knowledge sharing for the two specific initiatives (Family testing and Point of Care):

1. In coordination with the HIV team especially, the POC focal point and the HIV Specialist community systems, set up an electronic filing of all key documents on POC and Family testing per country.
2. In collaboration with the health officer in charge of data, initiate a dashboard with key performance indicators to monitor the national roll-out of family testing in selected countries.
3. Liaise with HIV focal points in Ghana, CAR, Cameroon, and Burkina Faso and UNICEF consultants to collect Family Testing data and regularly populate and update the family testing dashboard.
4. Develop, maintain, and circulate the WCARO HIV Sharepoint site that will serve as a repository of key HIV events and announcements, strategy documents, databases, dashboards, among others.
5. Share Family testing data from the dashboard (tables, line charts, bar charts, etc.) on the SharePoint, websites and other platforms.
6. Support the HIV section in reviewing, synthesizing and the lessons learned and best practices, on POC and Family testing and disseminate them through webinar series and through other platforms.
7. Assist in the preparation of regional meetings and events related to HIV.
8. Take part in the office working Group discussions and meetings as needed.

Benefits to intern:

1. This internship will complement current academic training, field service experience and further provide exposure to the global EMTCT, Paediatric and Adolescent HIV and integration of services within MNCH agenda and priorities and increase their technical knowledge of EMTCT, Paediatric and Adolescent HIV and integration of services within MNCAH.
2. The intern will expand existing skills in technical writing, organizational and communication experience, gain hands-on experience organizing meetings, webinars and events for EMTCT, Paediatric and Adolescent HIV and integration of services within MNCAH partners and apply research skills to identify pertinent and timely content for websites, literature reviews and tool development.
3. This internship will provide the chance to test out potential career choices in the area of data and knowledge management, monitoring and evaluation, and international public health, by gaining real-life experience doing the work of an employee in a culturally diverse organization.

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