National Consultant

**Contractual Arrangement**: External consultant

**Contract Duration (Years, Months, Days)**: 11 months

**Job Posting**: Jan 9, 2025, 12:25:47 AM

**Closing Date**: Jan 23, 2025, 4:59:00 PM

**Primary Location**: Malaysia-Kuala Lumpur

**Organization**: WP_MYS Malaysia

**Schedule**: Part-time

**Purpose of the Consultancy**:
This consultancy will support the Ministries of Health in Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, and Singapore by assisting the Ministry of Health (MOH) in formulating and executing strategies to enhance the International Health Regulations (IHR, 2005). This includes strengthening laboratory systems, biosafety and biosecurity measures (such as the national public health laboratory network, specimen referral mechanisms, and genomic surveillance), aligned with the Asia Pacific Health Security Action Framework (APHSAF) and guided by performance indicators from IHR monitoring and evaluation frameworks (e.g., the IHR Joint External Evaluation - JEE and the State Party Self-Assessment Report - SPAR).

Additionally, in collaboration with WHO Headquarters, Regional Offices, and WHO Collaborating Centres, this role will facilitate and coordinate capacity-building initiatives aimed at enhancing national and subnational laboratory capabilities. These efforts will focus on detecting, confirming, and characterizing pathogens responsible for emerging, re-emerging, vaccine-preventable, and other infectious diseases with epidemic and pandemic potential.

**Background**:
In the Western Pacific Region, the Asia Pacific Health Security Action Framework (APHSAF) serves as a unified strategic framework that guides the collaborative efforts of Member States (MSs), WHO, and partners in advancing the implementation of the International Health Regulations (IHR, 2005). As the successor to the Asia Pacific Strategy for Emerging Diseases and Public Health Emergencies (APSED III), APHSAF builds upon lessons learned from previous iterations and outlines six interconnected multisectoral domains that form a robust health security system. The WHO Health Emergencies (WHE) team supports the Ministry of Health in strengthening its overall capacity to prevent, detect, and manage emerging diseases, as well as prepare for and respond to public health emergencies through APHSAF's implementation.

Enhancing public health laboratory capacity, a vital public health function, spans multiple subdomains of APHSAF to establish a comprehensive health security system. These include detecting, reporting, and monitoring novel and unusual events (assess and respond domain); prevention and risk mitigation (readiness and resilience domain); and developing and maintaining the health security workforce (support and enable domain). Expertise in laboratory diagnostics is essential for supporting Member States in building effective diagnostic and laboratory capacities for pathogen and genomic surveillance, which are integral to health emergency preparedness, response, and resilience.

**Deliverables**:
Under the supervision of the WHO Representative and WHE focal point, the selected consultant will provide technical expertise and operational support in health emergency preparedness, response and resilience, focusing on laboratory-related activities.

Output 1: Support the Ministry of Health (MOH) in designing and implementing strategies to enhance the International Health Regulations (IHR, 2005) with a focus on laboratory systems, biosafety, and biosecurity. This includes strengthening the national public health laboratory network, specimen referral mechanisms, and genomic surveillance, aligned with the Asia Pacific Health Security Action Framework (APHSAF) and guided by performance indicators from IHR monitoring and evaluation frameworks (e.g., IHR Joint External Evaluation - JEE and State Party Self-Assessment Report - SPAR).

Deliverable 1.1: Support the enhancement of laboratory infrastructure and development of standard operating procedures and analysis of human specimens and laboratory quality management systems.
Deliverable 1.2: Monitor and evaluate the development of genome sequencing surveillance system to detect variants of emerging diseases and other infections pathogens as per the EMPaCT approach.
Deliverable 1.4: Support the enhancement of laboratory detection of environmental Organic Pollutants in Environment.
Deliverable 1.5: Support the enhancement of Laboratory detection for chemical and biological agents as bioweapons as part of the preparedness under Biosafety and Biosecurity.
Deliverable 1.6: Support the development of National Biorepository Policy for Malaysia.

Output 2: Coordinate and facilitate capacity-building initiatives, in collaboration with WHO Headquarters, Regional Offices, and WHO Collaborating Centres, to enhance national and subnational laboratory capabilities. These efforts focus on detecting, confirming, and characterizing emerging, re-emerging, and other communicable diseases, including vaccine-preventable disease