Organizational Context
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) is the world’s largest humanitarian network, with 191 member National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. IFRC uses the Triple R – response, resilience and respect – to deliver on Strategy 2030. IFRC responds to disasters and crises, ensuring timely, coordinated and locally led humanitarian action. IFRC supports its members in building community resilience in the areas of climate and environment, health and wellbeing, and migration and displacement. IFRC promotes respect for our fundamental principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntary service, unity, and universality, including in our work on values, power and inclusion. The IFRC focuses throughout on our core mandate – our raison d’être – of strategic and operational coordination, humanitarian diplomacy, National Society development, and accountability.
IFRC is led by its Secretary General and has its Headquarters in Geneva and five regional offices in Africa (Nairobi); the Americas (Panama); Asia Pacific (Kuala Lumpur); Europe (Budapest); and MENA (Beirut) as well as representation offices, service centres and delegations across the globe.
Due to the recent global financial cutbacks in public health and immunization activities, technical support to many country Ministries of Health in the African region has been withdrawn thereby seriously threatening the planning and implementation of vaccination campaigns in 2025 and 2026. As a consequence, a partnership between the IFRC and the Measles and Rubella Partnership (M&RP) seeks to establish a Measles & Rubella Country Platform (M&R Country Platform) to overcome this gap in technical support to the Ministries of Health. The M&R Country Platform serves to advance the goals of the Immunization Agenda 2030 and is committed to reducing measles and rubella morbidity and mortality by supporting countries to implement the Measles and Rubella Strategic Framework 2021- 2030.
Job Purpose
Tajikistan is planning a follow-up measles–rubella supplementary immunization activity (MR SIA) in response to residual immunity gaps and the risk of further measles and rubella transmission. The campaign was planned for October 2026 in 54 cities and districts not covered by the 2025 outbreak-response campaign. It is intended to vaccinate children aged 6–59 months and achieve at least 95% coverage of the target group.
The Ministry of Health and Social Protection of the Population (MOHSPP), the Republican Centre for Immunoprophylaxis (RCIP), and partners intend to conduct a probability-based post-campaign coverage survey (PCCS) after completion of the campaign and any formally designated campaign mop-up period. The survey should be scheduled promptly enough to minimize recall error while allowing campaign records, the sampling frame, approvals and field arrangements to be finalized.
The PCCS will provide an independent population-based estimate of campaign vaccination coverage among eligible children in the targeted campaign area, quantify statistical uncertainty, describe who was missed and why, and inform corrective programme actions. Administrative coverage and other monitoring data may be triangulated with the PCCS, but their different denominators, purposes and limitations must be preserved.
This consultancy will provide end-to-end technical leadership and quality assurance for survey design, preparation, field implementation, data management, weighted analysis, reporting, dissemination, and transfer of all survey assets, while national bodies and partners retain decision-making and approval authority.
Project Objectives
Primary objective: Estimate MR SIA vaccination coverage among children who were aged 6–59 months on the approved campaign eligibility reference date and resided in the targeted campaign area, with design-adjusted 95% confidence intervals.
Secondary objective:
- Assess whether the approved campaign coverage target was achieved in the primary survey domain.
- Describe the principal reasons eligible children were not vaccinated and the main sources of information about the campaign.
- Report vaccination evidence separately by campaign card, register or other verified record, and caregiver recall, using the evidence rules approved in the protocol.
- Describe prior age-appropriate measles-containing-vaccine status and, where valid evidence supports classification, the proportion of children first reached by the campaign.
- Compare coverage by pre-specified characteristics such as sex, age group, residence or region only where the sampling design and sample size support valid inference.
- Develop evidence-based recommendations and a time-bound action matrix for follow-up and programme improvement.
Scope boundary: This ToR is strictly limited to the post-campaign coverage survey. It excludes intra-campaign monitoring, rapid convenience monitoring, campaign-readiness assessment, LQAS/LQA design or classification, supervision of vaccination delivery, and implementation of mop-up vaccination.
Job Duties and Responsibilities
1. Inception and governance
- Review the campaign plan, eligibility rules, administrative and monitoring data, maps, sampling frames, prior survey materials, and applicable partner requirements. Confirm the governance structure, reporting and review points, responsibilities, decision rights, dependencies, data ownership and access. Prepare a detailed workplan, deliverable calendar and risk register.
2. Protocol, approvals and probability sampling
- Finalize the objectives, estimands, target population, and eligibility reference date. Define the primary survey domain and any justified strata; calculate sample size using explicit assumptions for expected coverage, precision, confidence level, design effect/intracluster correlation and non-response. Work with the competent national statistics authority to obtain and document the sampling frame, select clusters and households probabilistically, retain all selection probabilities, and prepare maps and cluster metadata. Develop the analysis plan, table shells, field-quality plan, protocol-deviation process, and ethics/administrative approval package. Formal approvals remain with the competent authorities.
3. Survey tools and data system
- Develop or adapt household-listing, household-roster, eligible-child, consent, supervisor, quality-control and record-reconciliation tools. Establish an approved hierarchy for vaccination evidence and rules for inconsistent or missing evidence. Prepare English, Tajik, and Russian versions as required, with translation review and field testing. Produce an objective–question–indicator crosswalk and configure the agreed CAPI or paper workflow, including identifiers, skip logic, range/consistency checks, offline operation, secure transfer, backup, access control and audit trail. Prepare the data dictionary, manuals and SOPs.
4. Recruitment, training, pilot and readiness
- Define competency criteria for trainers, supervisors, interviewers, monitors and data personnel and support transparent selection. Lead standardized classroom and field training covering consent, confidentiality, household selection, interviews, digital/paper procedures, supervision and incident escalation. Assess competence before deployment. Conduct and document a pilot covering listing, selection, consent, interview, data transfer and daily review; revise all tools and procedures. Finalize cluster microplans, travel times, transport, communications, equipment, revisits, remote-area access and security arrangements.
5. Field implementation and quality assurance
- Provide technical oversight during listing and data collection. Ensure only probabilistically selected clusters, households and eligible children are included and that no unauthorized substitution occurs. Implement daily progress and data-quality review, supervisor observation, spot checks/back-checks, verification of selection and eligibility, query resolution, call-backs/revisits, and documented corrective action. Maintain issue and deviation logs and advise whether any fieldwork should be repeated under the approved protocol.
6. Data management and analysis
- Oversee record receipt and reconciliation, validation, cleaning, query resolution, linkage across survey levels, version control, backup, secure storage and de-identification. Calculate and document base weights from selection probabilities and apply justified non-response or other approved adjustments. Conduct complex-survey analysis with design-adjusted 95% confidence intervals, response indicators and only pre-specified adequately supported subgroup comparisons. Produce reproducible annotated code, tables, figures and a transparent limitations assessment.
Job Duties and Responsibilities (continued)
7. Reporting, dissemination and handover
- Present preliminary findings to the technical committee and support appropriate interpretation of survey quality, uncertainty and programme implications. Prepare draft and final reports, an executive summary, presentation and action matrix, and respond systematically to consolidated comments. Support the national dissemination/debriefing. Hand over all editable tools, manuals, maps, datasets, codebooks, weight calculations, analysis syntax, logs, presentations and reports, and conduct a technical handover session for designated staff.
- The consultant shall provide concise written progress updates at the frequency agreed in the inception workplan and immediately escalate risks that may affect survey validity, safety, data protection, schedule or budget.
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Location
The assignment is expected to be home-based with mission(s) to Dushanbe and selected survey areas in Tajikistan. The exact duty station, number of missions, travel dates and selected field areas will be confirmed after approval of the sample and field plan. Travel shall follow the IFRC’s authorization, security, medical clearance and insurance requirements. The consultant shall not commence travel without written authorization.
Support to be provided to the consultant
The consultant will be provided with support from the IFRC for travel, logistics, program management through the M&R Country Platform Office and Administrative Lead. Additional technical and administrative support may be provided through colleagues at the Regional Office.
Time allocation
The final start date, end date, workdays and mission schedule shall be agreed only after the survey design, national implementation arrangement, campaign calendar and fieldwork window are confirmed. The approved workplan shall allocate adequate time to inception; protocol and probability sampling; tools and data-system preparation; training and pilot; fieldwork quality assurance; data management and weighted analysis; and reporting, dissemination and handover. No field data collection may begin before required technical and administrative approvals are documented.
Any later reallocation of approved workdays requires prior written agreement; an increase in the approved total requires formal amendment.
Management of consultancy
The consultant will be directly managed by the IFRC M&R Country Platform Officer with overall coordination from the IFRC Immunization Senior Officer based in Geneva.
Education
Required
- Advanced university degree in epidemiology, biostatistics, public health, demography, survey methodology or a closely related field.
Experience
Required
- At least seven years of relevant professional experience, including design and analysis of probability-based household surveys.
- Demonstrated experience with vaccination coverage surveys and preferably post-measles/rubella campaign surveys using WHO methods.
- Experience developing and testing CAPI or paper instruments, training and supervising multidisciplinary field teams, and managing field and data quality.
Preferred
- Previous work in Tajikistan, Central Asia or comparable multilingual, mountainous or hard-to-reach settings.
- Experience working with ministries of health, national statistics authorities, WHO, Gavi, UNICEF, IFRC or similar partners.
Knowledge, Skills and Languages
Required
- Demonstrated expertise in complex sample design, sample-size calculation, sampling weights, design-adjusted confidence intervals and reproducible analysis using R, Stata, SAS, or other agreed software.
- Strong technical writing, presentation, facilitation and capacity-transfer skills.
- Professionalism, independence and sound judgement; ability to distinguish technical advice from formal approval or resource commitment.
- Ability to work constructively with national and international counterparts and to communicate statistical issues in clear programme language.
- Strong planning, risk management, documentation and delivery discipline under tight operational timelines.
LANGUAGES
Required
- Excellent English written and oral communication skills required. Ability to communicate and conduct work in English is required.
Preferred
- Working knowledge of Russian desirable; knowledge of Tajik is an additional asset.
Competencies, Values and Comments
Application Instructions
- Please submit your application in English only.
- Please include the below in your application:
Notes
- The consultant will be contracted by the IFRC and the standard contractual terms will apply.
- Agreed travel expenses will be reimbursed at cost in accordance with in the IFRC’s relevant regulations.
The closing date and time for this vacancy are based on Geneva time. Applications must be submitted by 23:59 (11:59 PM) Geneva time on the advertised closing date.
