Technical Facilitator

USAID/PATH Healthy Markets Project

SOW – Technical facilitator on Pre-exposure Prophylaxis

Scope of work

The Technical facilitator will provide support in coordinating activities of the national technical working group on PrEP and participate in developing plan and guidelines for PrEP implementation.

Background

The USAID/PATH Healthy Markets project (HM) is an initiative that contributes to domestic financing for the national HIV program. It does this by growing a viable commercial market through increased supply and demand of key population preferred HIV-related goods and services. Through HM, USAID offers market research, policy and regulatory support, technical assistance, and private sector engagement opportunities to encourage innovation and investment.

Oral HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, is a way for people who do not have HIV but are at substantial risk of contracting it to prevent HIV infection by taking a pill every day as part of a combination HIV prevention strategy. When taken consistently, PrEP has been shown to reduce the risk of HIV infection in people who are at high risk by up to 92 percent. Since 2015, the World Health Organization has strongly recommended PrEP as part of a combination HIV prevention strategy for people at substantial risk of HIV.

In March 2017, PrEP program has been launched & piloted in Vietnam with plan of expanding to more provinces in the nation. The expansion would require strategic planning to implement the service including prioritizing group of people who are at “substaintial HIV risk” (WHO guidelines), identifying where and when to provide PrEP, providing technical support at site levels and monitoring the program during the implementation.

Together with PrEP, Vietnam has implemented Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) for years in order to prevent people who being potentially exposed to HIV becoming infected. According to Decision 120/2008/QD-TTg dated 29/8/2008 of Vietnam Prime Minister, PEP is provided free of charge for staffs who get occupational accident during their duties. However, except for those cases, there are many other ordinary people who also might expose to HIV through their risk behavior. In order to prevent HIV infected as well as HIV transmission, VAAC, together with other partners will expand the non-occupational PEP service (nPEP) to the community.

Key activities

• Develop plan on how to provide technical assistance (TA) to clinics that are offering PrEP services as part of combination prevention options. The plan should consider different services modalities that are supported by various project partners in different provinces/cities.
• Develop TA tools for monitoring quality of services at implementing sites, for example: supervision check lists, questionnaires, etc..
• Participate in supportive supervision trips, when relevant,
• Support communication and promotion plan, social marketing plan to introduce PrEP to key population; support to integrate PrEP content and other KP-specific health services content to the VAAC’s website.
• Support other advocacy activities related to PrEP/PEP, i.e. consolidate evidence to advocate for PrEP services being covered by social health insurance and PrEP to be included in the prevention package for target populations.
• Work with the other consultant to develop monitoring and following-up plan for PrEP scale-up program;
• Develop implementing report and share PrEP implementing results to related authorities & partners for future plan;
• Participate in other activities related to PrEP/PEP services implementation as required.

Deliverables

Timing

May 02, 2019 – September 30, 2019
LOE: Up to 15 working days per month.

The closing date for application is April 21. Applicants will submit their application package to Ms. Pham Thi Thu Hang via email at [email protected] [1]