Call for a consultant for evaluation of the continuum of HIV care in North Macedonia

Deadline for submission: end of day on 27 April, 2021

Background

Stronger Together, Association for Support of People Living with HIV from Skopje, NorthMacedonia, is a community-based organization that supportspeople living with HIV in executingtheir rights and strives to shape public policy towards ending the HIV epidemic.

Stronger Togetheris the national partner from North Macedonia in the multi-country project Sustainabilityof Servicesfor Key Populations in EECA Region (#SoS_project, 2019-2021), which is managed by the Alliance for Public Health from Kyiv, Ukraine, and is funded by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

North Macedonia has a low-level HIV epidemic concentrated within the population of men who have sex withmen, where HIV prevalence was estimated at 5.4% in 2018.

In 2018 and 2019, in collaboration with Macedonian and external experts, we conducted the first national evaluations of the continuum of HIV care in North Macedonia for 2017 and 2018 respectively. Anew evaluation of the HIV continuum shall be conducted within the framework of the SoS_project based on the epidemiological and clinical data available at the end of 2020.

The evaluation of the continuum of HIV care in North Macedonia for 2020 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 an external expert with specific expertise for this particular task. 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.

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 2020, including an estimation of the total number of people living with HIV at the end of that year using the ECDC 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.

Tasks of the consultant

The consultant will be expected to perform the following tasks within the framework of the technical support:

  1. Provide instruction on the data collection for the purpose of applying the ECDC tool and the evaluation of the continuum –(1 day, including a TC and e-mail exchange)
  2. Arrange the necessary clinical and epidemiological data and apply the ECDC tool to produce an estimation of the total number of PLHIV, including the drafting of a short report about the analysis(2 days)
  3. Provide technical support to the local team on the methodology for evaluating the three basic stages of the continuum, including guidance and advice on dealing with missing data(2 days, including at least one TC and review of draft and final reports)
  4. Provide instruction on using the ECDC tool to national experts and community representatives with the objective of enabling independent use of the tool in future (1.5 days)

Total number of days for the consultancy: 6.5 days.

Timeframe of the consultancy

The services under this consultancy should be accomplished in the period of 1-31 May, 2021.

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, 6.5 working days(1 working day = 8 hours).The consultant will be remunerated at the rate of 320 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:

  • Expertisein HIV epidemiology and/or public health(to be confirmed by education and relevant working experience)
  • Experience in performing analyses related to continuum of HIV carein other countries
  • Experience in conducting trainings on methodologyrelated 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 an application to [email protected] with subject ‘HIV continuum’. The application should include the following:

  • Brief letter of interesthighlighting relevant experience
  • CV

The application should preferablyinclude (as links or attachments) any published materials and/or other previous work of the applicant relevant for this particular call.

The main contact person for this call is Aneta Maneva, Program Coordinator at Stronger Together: contact e-mail: [email protected]

The deadline for submitting an application is the end of day on 27 April, 2021.

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