National Consultant to review and update Village Health Worker (VHWs)/Community Health Worker (CHW) Training Manual and Handbook and develop Supportive Supervision Tools for CHWs.

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Purpose of Activity/Assignment:  

To update the Village Health Worker/Community Health Worker Training Manual, Handbook and Supportive Supervision Tools. The recent developments on health, nutrition, social and behavior change, impact of climate change on health, re-emerging diseases, environment and occupational health, nutrition, etc. need to be incorporated into the updated training manual and the handbook. These documents will enable CHWs to enhance the knowledge and create awareness in the communities for promotion of health and nutrition, and prevention of diseases.

Scope of Work:

Background

Bhutan embarked upon modern health care system in early 1960s with commencement of the First Five-Year plan. The country has made significant progress in reducing maternal, new-born, infant and child mortality, stillbirths, stunting and underweight over the last decades. Community participation in promotion of health and nutrition practices at community level for prevention of diseases is important to benefit individuals and families at the community level. It is the first level of care in health systems for individuals, the family, and communities by bringing health care as close as possible to where people live and work.

The Astana declaration on October 27, 2018, emphasizes the critical role of primary health care and aims to refocus efforts on primary health care to ensure that everyone everywhere can enjoy the highest possible attainable standard of health.  Community Health Workers (CHW) are the backbone of community health system for Primary Health Care (PHC) services for delivering a range of preventive, promotive and basic curative services related to reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health, communicable and non-communicable diseases, mental health, environmental health and nutrition for children, adolescent and women.

Section 5.3 of the National Health Policy 2011, states that “primary health care shall also reach out to the communities through Outreach Clinics, Village Health Workers and other available modes of communication”, section 6.9 states that “Village Health Workers shall be trained in order to sustain achievement of universal health coverage and to encourage community participation in the health care delivery system”, and section 13.1 of the National Health Policy 2011 states that “active community participation and empowerment in the healthcare delivery system shall be encouraged to facilitate achieving universal health coverage especially to unreached rural population”.

During recent years, many developments have occurred in the areas of health and nutrition, including emerging health issues such as impact of climate change on health, emerging and re-emerging diseases, environment, and occupational health, non-communicable disease, triple burden of malnutrition, food system which are not well included in the current training manual and handbook developed in 2017. These need to be incorporated into the CHW training manual and handbook to be able to impart the comprehensive knowledge to the CHWs for serving the communities better.

The training manual is a guide for trainers in training CHWs to demonstrate, using simple terms and explanations to align with the minimum level of knowledge and understanding required by  community health workers including VHWs on disease prevention, antenatal care, institutional delivery, postnatal care, immunization, safe water, sanitation and hygiene, promotion of better health and nutrition, waste management, menstrual health and hygiene, impact of climate change on health, disease outbreak in the community, provision of simple first aid treatment for emergencies, minor ailments and referral of patients to the nearest health center.

The handbook, on the other hand is a quick reference document to be used by the CHWs. It lists simple drugs and dosages and provides practical tips and key points to remember and apply while serving the communities. It is also intended to be used as a companion to the CHWs Trainer’s manual and includes important illustrations that the trainers can use for explaining better.

• Demonstrated communication, analytical and facilitation skills, and able to manage diverse viewpoints and work in demanding situations.
• Excellent writing skills and ability to synthesize complex information and issues. Strong analytical and conceptual thinking, ability to work in teams.
• Experience in developing training manual/guidelines, handbook, modules on public health and nutrition programmes.
• Experience on teaching/training facilitation on primary health and nutrition care (PHC) will be an asset.
• Ability to organize and plan complex work following the established timeframes.
• Experience in liaising with public officials and capable of responding rapidly to ad hoc requests for meetings under tight deadlines; facilitating discussions among diverse stakeholders.
• Demonstrated technical knowledge on Primary Health Care and Community Health and Nutrition programmes.

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Remarks:  

1. The candidates are required to submit both technical proposal and financial proposals. 

2. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process. 

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures, and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws. 

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully-vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.