Ebola Response Consultant, Epidemic Preparedness and Response, Global Health Programs
PATH · Democratic Republic of the Congo
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PATH is a global nonprofit dedicated to achieving health equity. With more than 40 years of experience forging multisector partnerships and with expertise in science, economics, technology, advocacy, and dozens of other specialties, PATH develops and scales up innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing heath challenges.
Location: Democratic Republic of the Congo, with deployment to Eastern DRC and other outbreak-affected areas as required
Contract Type: Short-term consultant/ Consultant Roster
Duration: Intermittent assignments and field deployments of up to six weeks at a time
PATH seeks Ebola Response Consultants for the STRengthening Infectious disease DEtection Systems (STRIDES) Project. The global project will support and strengthen surveillance, detection and analytical capacity of infectious diseases across both human and animal health.
Through this call, PATH intends to establish a roster of qualified national and international consultants who can be deployed on short notice to support Ebola response activities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, particularly in Eastern DRC.
Selected consultants will provide technical and operational assistance across one or more of the following areas:
Public health surveillance and field epidemiology.
Case detection, alert management, and outbreak investigation.
Contact tracing and transmission chain analysis.
Health information systems and outbreak data management.
Data analysis, visualization, dashboards, and automated reporting.
Geographic information systems, geolocation, and spatial epidemiology.
Community-based and event-based surveillance.
Points-of-entry and points-of-control surveillance.
Cross-border surveillance and information sharing.
Surveillance training, mentoring, and supportive supervision of response personnel.
Consultants must meet or exceed the required qualifications listed below. They should be subject matter experts capable of providing practical, field-oriented technical assistance in complex and rapidly evolving outbreak environments, with limited supervision.
Responsibilities include:
Depending on the consultant’s area of expertise and the requirements of each deployment, responsibilities may include one or more of the following technical areas:
Surveillance and epidemiology
Support the day-to-day technical and operational implementation of Ebola surveillance and epidemiological response activities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Support implementation of national, provincial, health-zone, health-facility, community, point-of-entry, and point-of-control surveillance activities.
Strengthen systems for alert detection, notification, triage, verification, investigation, classification, referral, and closure.
Support active case finding in health facilities and communities, including retrospective review of registers and investigation of unexplained illnesses or deaths.
Support indicator-based, event-based, community-based, laboratory, mortality, and point-of-entry surveillance.
Conduct epidemiological analyses to describe transmission by person, place, and time.
Identify transmission hotspots, high-risk populations, surveillance gaps, and priority locations for intervention.
Support investigation and reconstruction of transmission chains.
Develop or adapt Ebola case definitions, standard operating procedures, investigation forms, line lists, alert logs, job aids, and reporting tools.
Support daily and weekly surveillance coordination and epidemiological review meetings.
Produce situation reports, epidemiological bulletins, presentations, risk assessments, dashboards, maps, and other decision-support products.
Contact tracing and case investigation
Support rapid and comprehensive investigation of suspected, probable, and confirmed Ebola cases.
Assist response teams in identifying exposure histories, places visited, potential sources of infection, and individuals who may have been exposed.
Support timely listing, classification, registration, and risk categorization of contacts.
Establish or strengthen procedures for daily contact follow-up, symptom monitoring, escalation, referral, and discharge.
Strengthen systems for tracing contacts who are traveling, displaced, unavailable, lost to follow-up, or located across provincial or international borders.
Support transmission chain analysis and visualization.
Monitor contact tracing indicators, including listing completeness, daily follow-up coverage, timeliness, loss to follow-up, symptomatic contacts detected, and referrals completed.
Reconcile case, contact, laboratory, vaccination, and case management data.
Support implementation and use of Go.Data or other approved contact tracing platforms.
Train and mentor case investigators, contact tracers, supervisors, community health workers, and surveillance personnel.
Work with community engagement teams to address reluctance, stigma, misinformation, and community concerns affecting contact identification and follow-up.
Health information systems and data management
Support the design, deployment, optimization, and management of Ebola surveillance and response data systems.
Assess and strengthen data collection, reporting, storage, validation, analysis, visualization, and information-sharing processes.
Support configuration and use of DHIS2 and other approved outbreak information systems.
Develop and maintain case line lists, alert databases, contact tracing databases, laboratory datasets, case management modules, and related response datasets.
Harmonize data definitions, unique identifiers, classifications, indicator calculations, and reporting periods across response pillars.
Strengthen interoperability and data exchange among surveillance, laboratory, case management, contact tracing, vaccination, mortality surveillance, and points-of-entry systems.
Establish data cleaning, deduplication, validation, reconciliation, backup, and quality assurance procedures.
Conduct data quality assessments and support implementation of corrective actions.
Develop automated dashboards, alerts, data visualizations, and routine reporting products.
Support data governance, access controls, confidentiality, security, and information-sharing procedures.
Troubleshoot hardware, connectivity, software, user-access, data-flow, and reporting challenges in field settings.
GIS, geolocation, and spatial epidemiology
Support geolocation of cases, contacts, alerts, deaths, health facilities, laboratories, treatment centers, vaccination sites, burial locations, points of entry, points of control, and community surveillance structures.
Develop and maintain geospatial databases, administrative boundary files, health-area maps, settlement datasets, transport routes, and other operational layers.
Produce routine and ad hoc maps for surveillance, contact tracing, vaccination, laboratory referral, case management, logistics, and community engagement.
Conduct hotspot, cluster, proximity, accessibility, catchment-area, and spatial risk analyses.
Support mapping of transmission chains, population movement, displacement patterns, transport corridors, markets, border crossings, and other locations relevant to outbreak risk.
Identify surveillance blind spots, underserved communities, high-risk border areas, and locations requiring active case finding.
Support use of GPS-enabled and mobile data collection tools, including KoboToolbox, Survey123, Open Data Kit, or other approved platforms.
Validate geographic coordinates and resolve inconsistencies in place names, facility locations, and administrative boundaries.
Integrate geospatial data with epidemiological and surveillance datasets while protecting confidentiality.
Train response teams in geolocation, mobile data collection, map interpretation, and use of geospatial products.
Capacity strengthening and coordination
Train, coach, and mentor epidemiologists, surveillance officers, data managers, contact tracers, health information personnel, community health workers, and frontline health workers.
Develop training materials, standard operating procedures, job aids, supervisory tools, user guides, and technical guidance.
Support rapid orientations, simulations, tabletop exercises, and operational readiness activities.
Coordinate with the Ministry of Public Health, Hygiene and Social Welfare, Institut National de Santé Publique, provincial health divisions, health-zone management teams, WHO, Africa CDC, US government agencies, and national and international implementing partners.
Strengthen coordination and information exchange across surveillance, laboratory, case management, infection prevention and control, vaccination, risk communication and community engagement, safe and dignified burial, logistics, and points-of-entry response pillars.
Support interprovincial and cross-border surveillance and information sharing.
Participate in technical working groups, coordination meetings, and incident management structures.
Review and contribute to project reports, donor deliverables, technical publications, and external communications.
Document lessons learned, promising practices, operational challenges, and recommendations.
Perform other activities required by the evolving Ebola outbreak and response.
Required qualifications and experience:
Master’s degree or international equivalent in epidemiology, public health, medicine, veterinary medicine, nursing, health informatics, biostatistics, geographic information systems, data science, computer science, or another field relevant to the proposed technical area.
At least five years of relevant professional experience in public health surveillance, field epidemiology, outbreak response, contact tracing, health information systems, data management, GIS, or another relevant technical area.
Demonstrated experience supporting an Ebola outbreak, another viral hemorrhagic fever response, or a comparable high-consequence infectious disease emergency.
Strong professional experience working in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, preferably in Eastern DRC.
In-depth knowledge and practical expertise in at least one of the following areas:
Surveillance and field epidemiology.
Case investigation and contact tracing.
Health information systems and outbreak data management.
DHIS2 configuration and tool development.
Data analysis, visualization, and dashboard development.
GIS, geolocation, and spatial epidemiology.
Community-based or event-based surveillance.
Points-of-entry or cross-border surveillance.
Demonstrated ability to analyze information, identify operational problems, and recommend practical solutions suited to complex and resource-constrained environments.
Experience working with national and subnational government health authorities and outbreak response coordination structures.
Experience working with nongovernmental organizations, international organizations, government agencies, or donor-funded health programs.
Experience developing technical guidelines, standard operating procedures, training materials, tools, reports, dashboards, maps, or publications.
Ability to coordinate effectively with multidisciplinary and multisectoral teams.
Ability to manage multiple tasks, short deadlines, changing priorities, and field constraints while maintaining high technical quality.
Strong communication, facilitation, mentoring, interpersonal, and problem-solving skills.
Fluency in written and spoken English and French are required.
Willingness and ability to deploy to Eastern DRC on short notice for periods of up to six weeks at a time.
Ability and willingness to work in remote, resource-constrained, high-pressure, and potentially insecure environments.
Preference will be given to qualified candidates based in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. International candidates with substantial DRC and Ebola response experience may also be considered.
Candidates must have legal authorization to work in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or be eligible to obtain the authorizations required for the proposed consultancy and deployment.
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