Purpose of Job
Africa CDC’s African Volunteers Health Corps (AVoHC) has proved to be an important component of the continent’s capacity to respond to outbreaks and other public health emergencies using regional personnel to rapidly respond to public health emergencies across countries as needs arise. AVoHC was conceived of following the West Africa Ebola Virus Disease outbreak and launched in 2015, being managed under the Emergency Operations Centre of Africa CDC. To date deployments have included experts in epidemiology, laboratory sciences, communications, logistics, data management, social science, and clinicians. During an East Africa regional meeting of Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) and Emergency Preparedness and Response (EPR) leads in Nairobi in November 2022, Africa CDC identified an important gap in deployment capacity in mental health experts. To facilitate integration of MHPSS as a component of AVoHC response capacity, so that AVoHC can include MHPSS as part of future public health emergency response, we aim, with this call to recruit deployable MHPSS experts under AVoHC during public health emergencies in AU member states.
Main Functions
Deployment will usually take place as part of a wider team coordinated by AVoHC in conjunction with the Member State government (Ministry of Health/EPR mechanisms). Ongoing coordination of priority activities and reporting will be through this mechanism. The overarching support and coordination between deployments will be under the AVoHC team at Africa CDC. Support for MHPSS activities and personnel capacity will be provided by the mental health experts within Africa CDC.
The incumbent will ideally be part of the bigger umbrella of the AVoHC at Africa CDC. Being AVoHC member, the incumbent should be willing to be deployed for public health emergency response to any Member State as part of the African Volunteers Health Corps (AVoHC) Rapid Response Teams (RRTs).
The AVoHC Rapid Responder - Mental Health and Psychological Support Specialist is responsible for geometry dash providing immediate mental health and psychological support during health crises across African Union member states.