Background
In Ethiopia, despite the progress in child health over the past decades, nearly 205,000 children die every year before reaching their fifth birthday. Nearly 55% of them are newborns who die from birth asphyxia, infection, and preterm/low birth weight. The neonatal mortality rate (NMR) has remained high at 30/1000 live births for the last five years. To accelerate its efforts, the Ethiopian Government placed maternal and neonatal health as one of its top priorities as outlined in its current Health Sector Transformation Plan (HSTP, 2016-2020). To increase access to high impact essential newborn care interventions to every newborn, the FMOH in collaboration with its partners has been implementing facility-level interventions as well as community-based newborn care. This includes the establishment of more than 190 Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs), of which 80 are planned to be level III, providing the most advanced care for sick newborns.
The Ethiopian FMOH through the national child survival technical working group and with support from UNICEF, has developed basic NICU training manuals, treatment protocols, and recording and reporting forms. However, with a continued and strong commitment to improving newborn survival in Ethiopia, the landscape of neonatal care has changed since these resources have been developed. There are newly graduated and deployed neonatal nurses who are specializing in newborn care in Ethiopia and new technology and equipment are available in Ethiopian neonatal units. The country currently lacks level III NICU clinical guideline for the management of extremely high-risk newborns and those with complex and critical illnesses, that fully maximize current resources to improve the capacity of NICU staff at hospital level.
Objective:
To develop level III NICU clinical guidelines and job aids for care for extremely high-risk newborn infants and those with a complex and critical illness.
Scope of Work
The Consultant will develop level III NICU clinical guidelines for advanced care for extremely high-risk newborn adopting a participatory approach that involves: UNICEF, neonatologists, senior university pediatricians, neonatal nurse, Ethiopian Neonatal Network, Vermont Oxford Network, Ethiopian Pediatric Society, the FMOH, and other relevant stakeholders to develop, test, and finalize the documents. The documents will then be submitted to FMOH for endorsement.
Contract period
The Consultant will start on 10 November 2019 and submit final deliverables by end of January 2020
Specific tasks
Core Competencies
To be successful, the candidate should be able to demonstrate the following competencies: