IPC/WASH Officers - NOA (Multiple duty Station)

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Please note that the deadline for receipt of applications indicated above reflects your personal device's system settings.

PURPOSE OF THE POSITION:

To provide county-level technical and operational support for infection prevention and control and WASH readiness and response, with immediate emphasis on Bundibugyo Virus Disease preparedness. The officer will support the County Health Department and health facilities to establish safe screening, triage, isolation, referral, environmental cleaning, waste management, and health-worker protection systems, and to rapidly activate IPC/WASH measures if a suspected or confirmed case is detected.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES:

South Sudan faces overlapping public health emergencies, including recurrent outbreaks, population displacement, conflict, flooding, malnutrition, and severe disruption of essential health services. These conditions increase the risk of transmission within health facilities and communities and place health workers, patients, caregivers, and response teams at risk.

The ongoing regional Bundibugyo Virus Disease threat presents a high risk of importation through cross-border population movement, formal and informal crossing points, and major transport corridors linking South Sudan with Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Priority counties require immediate field-based capacity to translate national guidance into practical readiness at health facilities, points of entry, isolation sites, ambulances, and communities.

The County IPC/WASH Officer will be embedded in the assigned county and will work as part of the WHO-supported multidisciplinary readiness and response team. The position will strengthen county coordination, conduct facility readiness assessments, close critical IPC/WASH gaps, mentor health workers, monitor compliance, and support rapid response to alerts and cases. The officer will also help maintain IPC readiness for cholera, measles, mpox, and other epidemic-prone diseases while BVD readiness is intensified.

DESCRIPTION OF DUTIES:

Under the direct supervision of the WHO EPR Team Lead/Incident Manager, with day-to-day coordination by the County BVD Readiness and Response Coordinator and technical guidance from the national IPC/WASH lead, the incumbent will:

• Lead the development and implementation of a costed county IPC/WASH readiness and response action plan, aligned with the national BVD readiness and response plan and county risk profile.

• Support the County Health Department to establish or strengthen the IPC/WASH component of the county incident management structure, including clear roles, meeting schedules, action tracking, and partner coordination.

• Conduct rapid IPC/WASH readiness assessments in priority health facilities, points of entry, isolation and holding areas, laboratories, ambulance bases, and other designated sites, and maintain an updated gap and action tracker.

• Guide facilities to establish safe patient flow, including screening, triage, separation, immediate isolation, and referral of suspected BVD cases while maintaining access to essential services.

• Support the identification, preparation, and routine inspection of temporary isolation areas and referral facilities, ensuring functional water supply, sanitation, ventilation, waste systems, cleaning arrangements, and appropriate zoning.

• Train, coach, and mentor health workers, cleaners, ambulance teams, burial teams, laboratory staff, and other frontline personnel on standard precautions and transmission-based precautions relevant to viral haemorrhagic fevers.

• Ensure correct selection, rational use, donning, doffing, and disposal of personal protective equipment, including practical drills and competency checks for designated staff.

• Establish and monitor systems for hand hygiene, environmental cleaning and disinfection, safe management of linen, sharps, infectious waste, excreta, and reusable medical equipment.

• Provide technical guidance on preparation and safe use of chlorine solutions and other approved disinfectants, including concentration, labelling, storage, quality checks, and occupational safety.

• Support the development and implementation of ambulance infection-control procedures, including patient transfer, staff protection, cleaning, disinfection, waste disposal and readiness checks after each movement.

• Assess availability and functionality of water supply, sanitation facilities, drainage, handwashing stations, waste zones, power and essential IPC infrastructure, and coordinate practical corrective actions with WASH and logistics partners.

• Quantify and monitor essential IPC/WASH commodities, including PPE, hand hygiene supplies, disinfectants, sprayers, waste containers, body bags and cleaning materials, and promptly report stock gaps and pipeline risks.

• Support occupational health and safety measures for health workers, including exposure prevention, immediate reporting and management of occupational exposure, staff briefing, psychosocial support referral and monitoring of affected personnel.

• Participate in alert verification and rapid response missions when required, ensuring safe field practices, appropriate PPE, decontamination arrangements and IPC risk assessment at the site of the alert.

• Provide IPC/WASH support to safe and dignified burial readiness, including team preparation, equipment, disinfection, waste management and coordination with RCCE and community leaders.

• Work with RCCE colleagues to develop and deliver practical messages on safe care-seeking, hand hygiene, home care avoidance, safe handling of body fluids and community support for isolation, referral and safe burial procedures.

• Conduct supportive supervision and regular compliance monitoring using standardized checklists, document corrective actions and follow up until critical gaps are closed.

• Maintain county-level IPC/WASH data, including facility assessment results, training coverage, stock status, supervision findings, corrective actions, and incident reports, and submit timely daily and weekly updates.

• Contribute to county situation reports, dashboards, readiness reviews, simulation exercises, after-action reviews, and operational briefings.

• Coordinate closely with field epidemiology, case management, laboratory, RCCE, logistics, information management, points of entry, and partner teams to ensure an integrated readiness and response approach.

• Immediately notify the supervisor and relevant county authorities of any critical IPC failure, health-worker exposure, unsafe patient movement, stock-out, or other event that may increase transmission risk.

• Perform any other incident-specific duties assigned by the supervisor.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

Education:

Essential: First university degree in nursing, environmental health, public health, medicine, clinical medicine, water and sanitation, infection prevention and control, or another relevant health discipline from a recognized institution.

Desirable: Postgraduate training or professional certification in IPC, WASH in health-care facilities, field epidemiology, outbreak response, emergency management, or a related field.

Experience:

Essential:

• At least two years of relevant professional experience in IPC, WASH, clinical services, environmental health, outbreak response, or health-facility quality improvement.

• Practical experience in assessing health facilities and implementing IPC or WASH improvement actions.

• Experience training and mentoring health workers in standard precautions, PPE use, environmental cleaning, waste management, or related practices.

• Experience working with government health authorities, health facilities, and partners at the state or county level.

Desirable:

• Experience in viral haemorrhagic fever preparedness or response, including Ebola or Marburg disease.

• Experience with WHO, a Ministry of Health, UN agencies, international NGOs, or humanitarian health partners.

• Experience in South Sudan or another complex humanitarian and low-resource setting.

• Experience supporting simulation exercises, rapid response teams, isolation facilities, ambulances, or safe and dignified burial teams.

Functional Skills and Knowledge (Describe skills and knowledge specific to the post):

• Sound technical knowledge of infection prevention and control in health-care and emergency settings.

• Practical knowledge of WASH requirements for screening, triage, isolation, treatment, laboratory, ambulance, and waste-management operations.

• Ability to translate technical standards into simple, feasible actions in low-resource and field settings.

• Ability to train, coach, and supervise multidisciplinary frontline teams using practical demonstrations.

• Ability to identify high-risk practices, prioritize corrective actions, and monitor implementation.

• Strong planning, coordination, problem-solving, communication, and report-writing skills.

• Ability to work under pressure, travel frequently, and operate safely in difficult field environments.

• Good judgement, tact, and ability to work respectfully with government authorities, communities, and partners.

Information technology skills

• Good knowledge of Microsoft Office applications, particularly Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.

• Ability to use digital data-collection and reporting tools on smartphones or tablets.

• Experience in maintaining simple trackers, supervision databases, and operational dashboards is desirable.

COMPETENCIES:

• Teamwork

• Communication

• Producing results

• Respecting and promoting individual and cultural differences

• Building and promoting partnerships across the organization and beyond

• Moving forward in a changing environment

Languages:

Required: Excellent knowledge of written and spoken English

Desirable: Working knowledge of Arabic and relevant local languages used in the assigned duty station is an asset.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

• This vacancy notice may be used to fill other similar positions at the same grade level
• Only candidates under serious consideration will be contacted.
• A written test may be used as a form of screening.
• In the event that your candidature is retained for an interview, you will be required to provide, in advance, a scanned copy of the degree(s)/diploma(s)/certificate(s) required for this position. WHO only considers higher educational qualifications obtained from an institution accredited/recognized in the World Higher Education Database (WHED), a list updated by the International Association of Universities (IAU)/United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The list can be accessed through the link: http://www.whed.net/. Some professional certificates may not appear in the WHED and will require individual review.
• Any appointment/extension of appointment is subject to WHO Staff Regulations, Staff Rules and Manual.
• Staff members in other duty stations are encouraged to apply.
• For information on WHO's operations please visit: http://www.who.int.
• WHO is committed to workforce diversity.
• WHO also offers a wide range of benefits to staff, including parental leave and attractive flexible work arrangements to help promote a healthy work-life balance and to allow all staff members to express and develop their talents fully.
• The statutory retirement age for staff appointments is 65. For external applicants, only those who are expected to complete the term of appointment will normally be considered.
• WHO's workforce adheres to the WHO Values Charter and is committed to put the WHO Values into practice.
• WHO has a smoke-free environment and does not recruit smokers or users of any form of tobacco.
• This is a National Professional Officer position. Therefore, only applications from nationals of the country where the duty station is located will be accepted. Applicants who are not nationals of this country will not be considered.