Save the Children’s newly established Emergency Health Unit (EHU) is designed to enhance and expand Save the Children’s life-saving work in acute emergencies, including disease outbreaks, with a focus frontline health (including surgical), nutrition and WASH programming. The EHU initiates direct health response within 3 days of a declared emergency, creating the space for in-country response teams to focus on longer term response planning and scale up. Responses will be based on Save the Children’s core public health approach, covering the biggest childhood killers, including public health outreach, coupled with direct clinical care, including primary and secondary health, with surgical capacity.
EHU programming will increase the early impact of Save the Children responses, saving more children’s lives and increasing donor confidence to raise funds for immediate and longer term work. The EHU aims to reach at least 1.5 million people directly and leverage $100m during the period of Save the Children’s new strategy (2016-18).
The EHU consists of a central team, based in the UK, and standing EHU response teams who are equipped to deliver response modules. At this point in time there are two types of EHU response teams: Outpatient/Primary Health Teams and In Patient Teams. Save the Children US will be managing one Primary Health Team of 7 people, including clinical, WASH and Logistics specialists who are able to mobilize responses in line with the outpatient modules. Each EHU Team will deploy 2-3 times per year for a period of 3 months, enabling a smooth transition to the longer term response. Team members working for the SCUS EHU team may be based globally and must be ready to deploy with the team when an emergency strikes.
Critical within the EHU is the need for consistent oversight and management of medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, and maintaining the overall operating framework for the medical team to respond immediately. As time will be divided between preparedness, in-country support and training on medical logistics, and emergency response, the Senior Coordinator, Medical Logistics, will need someone with a logistics background and the ability to manage the set-up, operations, and take down of a wide range of medical equipment while maintain safe storage and management of supplies.
This role will support the set up and daily operations of the unit and will supervise and manage national logistics staff, under the remote supervision of a Logistics Manager.
This role will support the set up and daily operations of the unit and will supervise and manage national logistics staff, under the remote supervision of a Logistics Manager.
The Logistics Coordinator will be deployed 75-80% of the time, often to hardship posts.
Response Set-up & Management (70%)
- Ensure that Save the Children minimum standards of logistics procedures and country policies are implemented and adhered to in the area of responsibility, supporting relevant staff as required
- Support on medical logistics aspects of the response to ensure successful set up, management and hand-over/close out of facilities including storage and medical tents, medical equipment and devices, cold chain supplies and equipment.
- In collaboration and co-ordination with the logistics manager, support all logistical elements of a deployment
- Ensure quality standards of drug management are met for each module deployed- which will include warehousing, cold chain management, stock rotation and control, pipeline management, consumption monitoring and ordering
- Support management of drug donations with the Clinical Lead in line with EHU SOPs on received donations
- Responsible for the maintenance of medical equipment
- Ensure safe waste management of drug and medical supplies
- Ensure accurate reporting of drug movement stocks and consumption
- Recruit, train and manage national logistics staff involved in medical logistics
- Work with HR to ensure rapid recruitment of national logistics staff, including Logistics Assistants,
- Identify relevant training for the logistics team to ensure strengthened national capacity.
- Work with other logisticians to take on other logistics tasks as required
- Work with the logistics and medical team overseeing the reverse logistics of drugs and medical supplies and equipment.
- To review the National List of Registered Medicines and coordinate with the National Ministry of Health regarding the donation of unused medicines at the end of the deployment
- Ensuring that medicines which are not registered and cannot be donated to the host nation must be responsibly destroyed in line with national regulation.
- Ensure compliance with transport activity for medical items with national and international legislations and customs;
- Support initiatives in improving access to quality medicines during emergencies together with the MoH and other partners
- Document lessons learned and disseminate as appropriate, at a minimum with a post- deployment de-brief and contributing to After Action Review
Emergency Preparedness (30%)
- Taking direction from the EHU Central logistics manager, work with the EHU logs manager, EHU team leader and other Med Log colleagues
- Contribute to the EHU logistics team through participation in regular update and co-ordination calls, inputting to the EHU supply strategy
- In co-ordination with the EHU logistics team and the Global Pharmacy team, contribute to and maintain robust, practical and comprehensive documentation (SOPs, assessments, protocols and tools) relating to medicines’ management and pharmaceutical care in emergencies
- Drug management guidelines, consumption tools and templates for ordering and reverse logistics and the SOP for medical logistics for each type of deployment (mobile clinics, vaccination and diarrheal disease outbreak).
- Identify core competencies for medical logistics and work with priority countries’ HR to support the recruitment and orientation of CO medical logisticians
- Provide support to priority countries in identifying sources of medical equipment, supplies, and services required to support emergency deployment operations
- Support the team work plan to work with key country programs and regional offices on e-prep plans aiming to ensure that the EHU links in and supports SCI operational surge activities
- Develop training materials and support the training of EHU clinicians and operations staff in medical logistics
- Attend and co-facilitate regional or global workshops or trainings on emergency health response and emergency health supply chain
- Strong experience with international NGOs in humanitarian medical logistics with at least 2-3 years’ international experience.
- Qualified in medical logistics or pharmacy or equivalent relevant qualification.
- Previous experience of mass vaccination campaigns and strong knowledge of cold chain management.
- Previous experience of supporting first phase, self- sufficient primary health care programs.
- Good knowledge of general logistics and willingness to multitask.
- Strong communicator and team member.
- Proficiency in Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Outlook)
- Fluent written and spoken English.
- Demonstrated flexibility and ability to deploy to overseas locations at very short notice.
- Ability to work in and maintain a positive team dynamic in insecure environments.
- Demonstrated ability to work in a multi-cultural environment, and establish harmonious and effective working relationships both within and outside the organization.
Desirable
- Previous experience of cholera response or disease outbreak response.
- Qualified in IATA Dangerous Goods
- Proficiency in a 2nd language such as Arabic, French, Swahili, Spanish
- Previous experience of training and working with national teams on emergency preparedness.
- Certified TOT
- Experience in proposal development and inputting to budgets
- Meaningful work, with a knowledge that you are changing the lives of children all around the world
- A family friendly work environment
- Highly collaborative and innovative teams
- Generous paid vacation days, holidays, family leave days, and sick time
- Healthcare plans including medical, dental, and life insurance
- Retirement savings account with matching company contributions
- Structured and formalized management development and coaching programs for mid and senior level managers
- Extensive e-learning opportunities on a variety of topics offered through our affiliation with several prestigious universities as well as language learning opportunities.