Deadline for submission: end of day on 18 September, 2024
Background
Stronger Together, Association for Support of People Living with HIV from Skopje, North Macedonia, is a community-based organization that supports people living with HIV in executing their rights and strives to shape public policy towards ending the HIV epidemic. Stronger Together supports the building of capacities and expertise in the country in regards to the national response to HIV, including in the field of surveillance and data analysis. Moreover, it is part of the organization’s mission to contribute to the effectiveness of the national response to HIV and to support the country’s progress towards achieving the 2025 targets with regards to HIV (i.e. by 2025, 95% of all people living with HIV to be aware of their HIV status; 95% of those aware to be on HIV treatment; and 95% of those taking treatment to have completely suppressed the virus).
As the evaluation of the continuum of HIV care is not performed on regular basis by relevant institutions in North Macedonia (i.e. Institute of Public Health), the conducting of this exercise is included in the organization’s annual work program for 2024, which is supported by the European Union, as well as through the regional SoS Project 2.0 funded by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS Tuberculosis and Malaria. In order to respond to the lack of technical expertise in the country, an external expert will be engaged to support the process. The evaluation of the continuum of HIV care in North Macedonia for 2023 will be conducted by a team of national experts with backgrounds in epidemiology, infectious diseases, as well as community-based research and advocacy, who will be supported by the external expert with specific expertise for this particular task. The activity will include a capacity building element in the sense of transferring know-how to national experts, so that the Institute of Public Health could take on performing the analysis on a regular annual basis in future.
North Macedonia has a low-level HIV epidemic concentrated within the population of men who have sex with men, where HIV prevalence was estimated at 5.4% in 2018.
Purpose
The purpose of this technical assistance is to provide support to a national team of experts for proper methodological evaluation of the stages of the continuum of HIV care at the end of 2023, including an estimation of the total number of people living with HIV at the end of that year using the ECDC HIV Platform Tool, based on the available clinical and epidemiological data. A special focus in the analysis will be given to the subset of data related to men who have sex with men, considering the nature of the epidemic in North Macedonia. This Call for consultants is being announced for the purpose of identifying and engaging the external expert to provide technical assistance to the national team for evaluating the HIV continuum in North Macedonia.
Tasks of the consultant
The consultant will be expected to perform the following tasks within the framework of the technical support:
- Provide instruction on using the ECDC HIV Platform Tool to a national expert or experts with the objective of enabling independent use of the tool in future (1 day)
- Provide technical support to the local team and a national expert(s) on the methodology for evaluating the three basic stages of the continuum of HIV care, including guidance and advice on dealing with missing data (1 day)
- Participate in joint implementation of the ECDC HIV Platform Tool and the continuum of care assessment methodology and in developing draft and final reports (3 days)
Total number of days for the consultancy: 5 days.
Timeframe of the consultancy
The services under this consultancy should be accomplished till 31 October, 2024.
Remuneration
A contract for provision of services will be signed between the consultant and Stronger Together. The time needed for completing the tasks is estimated at, and should not exceed, 5 working days (1 working day = 8 hours). The consultant will be remunerated at the rate of 300 USD per 1 day. The consultant will have the responsibility to take care of all social security or income tax payments required by the law in the country of their residence.
Requirements for the consultant
The consultant is expected to have:
- Expertise in HIV epidemiology and/or public health (to be confirmed by education and relevant working experience)
- Experience in performing analyses related to continuum of HIV care in other countries
- Practical knowledge of the ECDC HIV Platform Tool
- Experience in conducting trainings on methodology related to the evaluation of the HIV continuum of care
- Good English oral and writing communication capacities
Selection criteria
Only applications fulfilling the requirements will be considered. The selection will be based on the level to which the applicant fulfills the basic requirements of this call. In addition, advantage will be given to applicants with experience of performing the same or similar task in other countries and/or in comparable epidemiological contexts. Background in community-based research will also be considered an advantage.
How to apply
Interested candidates are invited to send their CV with relevant experience to [email protected] with subject ‘HIV continuum’.
The application should preferably include (as links or attachments) any published materials and/or other previous work of the applicant relevant for this particular call.
Any potential questions should be addressed to [email protected]
The deadline for submitting an application is the end of day on 18 September, 2024.