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Jobs at Nutrition (TAN) at Nutrition International

Position Description:

Technical Assistance for Nutrition (TAN) is a project led and funded by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) which seeks to improve the capacity of Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) countries to design, deliver, and track the progress of nutrition programs and to generate, learn from and adopt knowledge of what works. Nutrition International is contributing to TAN by coordinating the provision of Technical Assistance (TA) to help national SUN Focal Points (SUN FP) in selected countries to overcome gaps in capacity for the design and delivery of multi-sectoral national nutrition plans, tapping into its global hub to source and deploy the expertise needed. The United Republic of Tanzania has a total population of 44,928,923 according to 2012 Population and Housing Census. It is a Low Income Country (LIC) with approximately 68 percent of citizens living below the poverty line of US$1.25 a day according to 2014 World Bank estimates. Since independence in 1961, Tanzania declared poverty, disease and ignorance as the major enemies of development which are all major causes and consequences of malnutrition. Despite progress made, malnutrition is still a major impediment to the alleviation of these three enemies.

Despite reductions in malnutrition rates in Tanzania during the past decade, the current rates are still of public health significance. According to the Tanzania Demographic Health Survey and Malaria Indicator Survey (TDHS-MIS), the prevalence of stunting among children aged 0 to 59 months decreased from 50% in the 1990s to 34% in 2015/16 which is still of high public health significance. Wasting in children 0-59 months, declined from 7% in 1992 to 4.5% in 2015/16 (achieving the World Health Assembly (WHA) 2025 target of below 5%). While the prevalence of anaemia in women aged 15 to 49 years declined from 48% in 2004-05 to 41% in 2010; the 2015/16 TDHS–MIS shows an increase to almost 45%, which is at a severe level according to WHO classification. Causes of anemia include inadequate dietary intake and diseases such as malaria and parasitic infestation.
The United Republic of Tanzania joined the SUN Movement in 2011 as a demonstration of its long standing commitment to improve nutrition status of its citizens. The SUN Movement housed in the Prime Minister’s Office, involves multiple ministries and stakeholders working together to address nutrition issues. All SUN Movement networks (government, UN, academia, business and civil society) under the leadership of the SUN FP are active and have worked together to ensure good progress towards achieving SUN Movement strategic objectives. Despite this progress, challenges of translating commitments into evidence-based, effective, impactful and sustainable actions that are implemented at scale remain.

The National Multisectoral Nutrition Action Plan (NMNAP) covering the five-year period between 2016/17 and 2020/21 is the implementation plan for the 2016 National Food and Nutrition Policy (FNP). It is an evidence-based multisectoral action plan to address all form of malnutrition in Tanzania. Scaling up prevention and control of micronutrient deficiencies is one of the seven (7) key result areas of the NMNAP. Prevention of anaemia among women of reproductive age (15-49 years) is ranked among the top 3 priority interventions in the NMNAP1.
The NMNAP target is to reduce the proportion of women 15-49 years with anaemia from 44.7 percent in 2015 (TDHS-MIS 2015/16) to 33 percent in 2021 which aligns to the second WHA target. To ensure coordinated response in the fight against anaemia, the SUN FP, through the Tanzania Food and Nutrition Centre (TFNC), requested Nutrition International to support development of national guidelines and tools for prevention and control of anaemia under the TAN project.
Objectives
Overall objective
The overall objective of this consultancy is to support the Government of Tanzania efforts in the prevention and control of anaemia among children (0-5years), adolescent girls (10 -19 years), women of reproductive age and pregnant and lactating women.
Specific Objectives
1. Develop English and Swahili versions of the national anaemia prevention and control guidelines including monitoring tools.
2. Develop training manuals and job aids for Health Facility Workers and Community Health Workers (CHWs) and translate to Swahili.
Expectations
This TA support is expected to contribute significantly to successful scale up of interventions to prevent and control anemia in Tanzania. The main outcome will be harmonized response in the fight against anaemia in line with WHO recommendations and adapted to Tanzania context.
The success of this TA will be measured by the attainment of the following:
1. Validated/final anaemia prevention and control guidelines ready to be institutionalized and adopted
2. Training manuals and job aids responding to capacity gaps in the prevention and control of anaemia at various levels (health facility and community level)
1 National Multisectoral Nutrition Action Plan (NMNAP) for the period July 2016 – June 2021

Scope of work
Taking a consultative, participatory approach with leadership from TFNC, the Consultant will undertake relevant tasks to produce the following specific deliverables:
1. Inception workshop (for the MND technical working group to agree on the framework of the guidelines, monitoring tools to be develop, training manuals and job aids).
2. Draft anaemia prevention and control guidelines.
3. Draft monitoring tools.
4. Draft training manuals and job aids for Health Facility Workers.
5. Draft training manuals and job aids for Community Health Workers (CHWs).
6. Validation workshop with key stakeholders.
7. Final national guideline on anaemia prevention and control (English and Swahili versions).
8. Final training manuals and job aids for Health Facility Workers (English and Swahili versions).
9. Final training manuals and job aids for Community Health Workers (CHWs) (English and Swahili versions).
Duty Station/Location

· The Consultant will be based at the TFNC for activities and processes that require physical presence. The Consultant can work from home when presence at TFNC is not required.

Travel

· The Consultant will be expected to participate to consultative workshops in-country.

Timeline

· The expected duration of the assignment is 90 working days starting August 2017 to June 2018 (specific dates will be determined in consultation with TFNC and Nutrition International).

Management and Reporting
1. The Consultant will work under the direct supervision of the Managing Director TFNC and/or their technical designate.
2. The Consultant will work closely with the MND technical thematic group to get technical inputs and contributions from leading experts’ in-country.
3. The TFNC will facilitate the operational linkages with all relevant sectors, technical teams and stakeholders under this TA.
4. Nutrition International will provide funding for the assignment, and payment will be subject to performance and reaching deliverables as agreed upon and outlined in the contract.
5. Nutrition International will provide technical input into the assignment and will ensure the quality of the work being delivered by the consultant.
6. Nutrition International, in consultation with TFNC will review Consultant’s deliverables (as needed) prior to sharing externally.

Profile/qualifications of Consultant
The Consultant will be selected following a competitive recruitment process. The profile of the team is expected as below:
Education
·Advanced University Degree or higher in nutrition, public health, medicine or other health related science field is required.
Language Skills
·Fluency in written and spoken English is mandatory.
·Knowledge of Swahili is an added advantage. Experience
·At least 10 years’ of technical experience in health and nutrition sector with focus in micronutrient programming.
·Excellent knowledge of Tanzania’s nutrition landscape (policies, strategies, plans, coordination e.t.c)
·Experience on guidelines development aligned to national policies and strategies. Prior experience developing micronutrient guidelines will be an added value.
·Excellent and practical experience in developing and pretesting training manuals.
·Experience of facilitation and building capacity of government sectors and/or other partners on areas broadly related to nutrition and health.
·Strong leadership and teamwork abilities
·Experience in standard translation of technical documents from English to Swahili. ·Demonstrated ability to communicate effectively with a wide range of stakeholders, including government officials and representatives of multilateral and bilateral organizations.
·Proven experience in facilitating multi-stakeholder technical working groups and negotiations in national and/or international settings, particularly in the field of micronutrient deficiencies.

Application Instructions:

Application process
Interested consultant are invited to submit the following by email toTechnicalAssistance@nutritionintl.org before 23rd June, 2017 with Application for TZA-03 – Short term Technical Assistance to support development of national anaemia prevention and control guidelines and manuals as the email subject.

Technical proposal:not exceeding eight pages, describing the consultant’s understanding of the task, proposed methodology, responsibilities of key stakeholders and detailed work plan that breaks down activities and outputs. Applicants are requested to present specific objective-based activities along with proposed level of effort required in terms of number of days.
Financial proposal: including daily fee rate, suggested number of trips/days in-country and any other expenses required to fulfil the terms of the consultancy (field trips, meetings, materials, translation of documents from English to Swahili etc.).
Up-to-date curriculum vitae (CV).
Nutrition International is committed to the fundamental principles of equal employment opportunity. Women are encouraged to apply.

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