Kenya: Consultancy to provide guidance on selection of platforms for sustainable delivery of Vitamin A supplementation

Scope of Position

When delivered twice a year to at least 80% of children aged 6 to 59 months in countries with high under five mortality and high rates of vitamin A deficiency, Vitamin A supplementation (VAS) can contribute to a reduction of U5M by up to 24%.

For the last decades, VAS has mostly been delivered in Sub Saharan Africa using National Immunization Days (NiD) or Supplementary Immunization Activities (SiA) as a vehicle. These campaigns are primarily organised to deliver polio or measles vaccine and commonly reached >90% coverage.

However, progress in immunization rates and the eradication of polio in most countries of SSA are leading to the phase out of these campaigns. Between 2016 and 2019, coverage of VAS dropped dramatically in SSA as many rounds of campaigns were cancelled and VAS was left without a vehicle.

To ensure that VAS can be continued in countries where it is still needed, HKI and its partners have started supporting the integration of VAS into health systems routine services. Among the solutions considered to sustain VAS, its integration into existing community or facility platforms is one of the most promising. 2 examples are the use of early child development centers in Kenya as delivery platforms and the combination of VAS with reproductive health and nutrition services in Sierra Leone.

In some other areas, community-health workers as the distribution platform.

Selecting the right platform is however complex, many existing platforms are not targeting the same age group as VAS (6 to 59 months old children), some are not easily reachable with supplies and do not perform well for reporting, some have a very low coverage. As a result, coverage of VAS through community and facility platforms remains low in most cases.

To develop guidance on these questions, HKI is recruiting a consultant to conduct a study seeking to identify the most relevant platform for routine delivery of VAS and provide guidance on how to select them and integrate VAS.

Objectives

The general objective of this study is to develop guidance for countries on how to select the most adequate delivery platforms for integration of VAS services and how to conduct this integration process.

More specifically:

· Conduct a mapping of all platforms that could potentially host children under 5 through literature and desk review;

· Develop a checklist of all the criteria defining the eligibility of a platform for the integration of VAS and the capacity of the platform to integrate VAS in their activities and reach a high coverage;

· Test this checklist in five (5) countries;

· Identify constraints related to the integration of VAS into platforms;

· Define the minimum standard required for VAS integration of each platform to reach coverage> = 80%;

· Develop a guide for the choice of platforms that can integrate VAS in their activities;

Deliverables, timeframe and level of effort

• Literature & desk review: 10 days – February 2020

• Checklist: 15 days – February 2020

• Testing of checklist: 15 days – March 2020

• Reporting on test: 5 days – April 2020

• Final guide: 10 days – May 2020

Total level of effort: 50 days

Qualifications

• Master of Public health of equivalent

• Experience in conducting literature review

• Experience in conducting similar field study

• Good English writing capacity

Interested candidates should submit their application to kenya.recruitment@hki.org by latest 1 January 2020, indicating as a subject “Consultancy to provide guidance on selection of platforms for sustainable delivery of VAS” with a recent resume and a cover letter where daily fee expected and period of availability are clearly mentioned.