Consultant for developing guidelines on Self-care interventions for SRHR in Zimbabwe - WHO

Purpose

Zimbabwe has a fragile health system and experiences both natural and man-made disasters including disease outbreaks and extreme weather phenomena that severely disrupt the delivery of essential health services. The National Health Strategy also identifies key issues affecting adolescents and youth’s health and well-being which include a high Adolescent Birth Rate (ABR) of 108 live births per 1000 women aged 15-19 years against a national target of 100 by 2022, and a regional average of 101 live births per 1000 women aged 15-19, high rates of adolescent pregnancies, maternal morbidity and mortality, early marriage, sexual and gender-based violence, new STIs/ HIV infections, high unmet need for family planning, drug, and substance use, and poor mental health. For adolescents, especially girls, these negative outcomes also result in school dropouts, thus preventing them from realizing their potential in life and productively contributing to national development.

Background and Justification

The World Health Organization (WHO) released SRH self-care guidelines in 2019 and Zimbabwe has not yet adapted and contextualised these. The concept of SRH self-care focuses on self-awareness, self-testing, and self-management. Evidence has shown that in resource-constrained settings with limited or disrupted adolescent and youth service coverage and access, SRH self-care plays a critical role in improving access to critical SRHR services. In a policy-restrictive environment, Self-care is a game changer in terms of adolescents' and young people’s access to and utilization of friendly services and can be a means to reduce health system costs by shifting tasks to users and caregivers and by shifting care outside of formal healthcare facilities.   In Zimbabwe, Self-care will also build upon existing movements and paradigm shifts, such as community-led response initiatives, which are powerful strategies currently supporting health systems. Against this background, we plan to develop the self-care guidelines in Zimbabwe in line with the latest WHO recommendations.

Purpose

• To develop guidelines on Self -Care interventions for SRHR in Zimbabwe in line with the latest WHO recommendations

Tasks

The consultant under the guidance of WHO technical staff will support and/or undertake the following tasks:

1. Conduct an inception meeting with the TWG for adolescents.
2. Develop national guidelines for self-care interventions for SRHR.
3. Conduct a stakeholders’ meeting involving representatives of professional associations, NGOs, Adolescents and other partners working in SRHR to present the draft national guidelines on Self-care.
4. Incorporate comments for finalization
5. Conduct a validation meeting

Key Deliverables

Deliverable will be in line with the task/TOR and will include.

1. Output 1: Inception meeting report
2. Output 2: Draft national guidelines for self-care interventions for SRHR
3. Output 3: Stakeholder dissemination meeting report.
4. Output 4: Validation meeting with key technical persons
5. Output 5:  Final draft report

Contract Duration

6 weeks