Consultants for ITN Campaign Costing studies at Malaria Consortium

VACANCY: Costing Consultants

 ITN Costing Studies

ONDO NET CAMPAIGN M&E, NIGERIA

Position A: Senior Health Economist (1)

Position B: Health Economist (1)

Position C: Local Assistant (2)

Experience: 2-5 years’ experience

Location: Ondo state

Duration: January- February-2022

Malaria Consortium requires qualified health economists and field assistants that will carry out financial and economic costing of the universal coverage ITN campaign implemented in December 2021 in Ondo State

Purpose/Scope of Assignment

Malaria Consortium in collaboration with the National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP) is planning to implement a campaign to distribute insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) in Ondo State in December 2021. Malaria Consortium will also implement a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) research in relation to the campaign. The Ondo Net Campaign M&E Project will gather comprehensive data to assess the outcomes of the campaign in terms of ITN coverage, cost, use rates and net durability, as well as to monitor relevant epidemiological and entomological indicators such as impact on malaria incidence rates reported from a sample of health facilities across the state, vector biting habits and insecticide resistance.

The costing study will be used to gather all financial and economic costs incurred in order to distribute ITNs in Ondo State during December 2021. Detailed data on different types of costs associated with the ITN campaign will be collected through document reviews and key informant interviews. Financial, logistics, operational and other relevant documents from all stakeholders involved in various stages of the implementation of the ITN distribution campaign will be assessed to collect various types of cost data. Key informants will be identified and interviewed at the global, national, state, local government area (LGA) and community levels to assess economic and financial costs incurred by various stakeholders. The collected data will be analysed to compute the cost per ITN delivered.

 Personnel required

The following field staff will be required:

Senior health economist: 1 person
Health economist: 1 person
Local assistants: 2 persons
Specific tasks

Senior health economist

• Leads a team to plan and implement a study to investigate the economic and financial costs of the 2021 Ondo ITN campaign.
• Leads the development of the work plan, methodologies and data collection tools for the costing study.
• Identifies key informants and data sources and liaises with focal points of contact to facilitate data collection and interviews.
• Leads the team during field visits, and assigns team members to specific duties during data collection, analysis and report writing.
• Leads the key informant interviews to gather detailed data on economic and financial resource expenditures or costs in relation to the ITN campaign at different levels incurred by various stakeholders, including direct and indirect costs.
• Will be responsible for writing and submitting the final report, including the methods and processes, itemised cost data, major findings, conclusions and recommendations.

Health economist

• Assists the senior health economist in all activities of the project.
• Contributes to the development of the work plan, study methodologies and data collection tools for the costing study.
• Works with the senior health economist to identify key informants and data sources and relevant cost data from stakeholder financial and logistics documents.
• Conducts key informant interviews.
• Will be responsible for the compilation and analysis of information obtained through key informant interviews.
• Will be responsible for cleaning and analysis of data on financial and economic costs obtained from various sources.

Contributes to the writing of the final report.

Field assistant

• Assists the senior health economist and the health economist during all field activities, data management and analysis.
• Carries out assigned research duties to locate and compile cost data from various sources and financial and other documents.
• Extracts relevant cost data from stakeholder financial, logistics and operations documents and other sources.
• Works with financial, logistics and operations officers of campaign implementers and other stakeholders to extract data from source documents in relation to financial and economic costs of the campaign.
• Assists the senior health economist and the health economist to compile and analyse information obtained through key informant interviews.
• Compiles all data and prepares information for further cleaning and analysis.

Deliverables

• A detailed work plan with methodologies and data collection tools.
• A comprehensive report on the costing study with summaries of financial and economic costs of the campaign expressed as cost per ITN delivered and components of the cost.
• Cleaned economic and financial cost data from all sources in relation to the Ondo 2021 ITN campaign.

Qualifications and experience

Senior health economist

• A PhD in health economics.
• At least 5 years’ experience in costing or health economics studies in disease control interventions.
• Demonstrated report writing skills.
• Experience with statistical analysis and authorship of relevant publications would be an advantage.
• Good knowledge of the Yoruba and/or Ijaw languages.

Health economist

• A post-graduate degree in health economics.
• At least 3 years’ experience in costing or health economics studies in disease control interventions.
• Demonstrated report writing skills.
• Experience with statistical analysis would be an advantage.
• Excellent knowledge of the Yoruba and/or Ijaw languages.

Field assistant

• A degree in accounting or economics.
• At least 2 years’ experience in accounting in the health sector or in health economics.
• Good knowledge of the Yoruba and/or Ijaw languages.
• Experience using MS Office software is essential.
• Must be resident of Ondo State.
• Activity timelines (January – February 2022)

Total TA days-

Senior health economist- 42 days

Health economist: 42 days

Local assistants: 30 days