CONSULTANCY FOR THE FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF THE KNOWLEDGE-SHARING PORTAL FOR ZIKA AND OTHER ARBOVIRUSES
Details:
CONSULTANCY
The Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA), with funding from the 11th EDF
Programme for the Support for Health System Strengthening for prevention and control of
outbreaks of Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases in the Caribbean, is seeking to engage a consultant for the implementation of a vector borne disease focused public education campaign in one CARPHA member state.
BACKGROUND
Vector-borne diseases (VBDs) such as those caused by viruses and parasites which are transmitted to humans, mainly by mosquitoes, are a major threat to the health and economies of societies globally. Over 80% of the world’s population is at risk of contracting a VBD with mosquito borne diseases (MBDs) having the greatest impact[1]. MBDs such as Malaria, Dengue, Chikungunya and Zika are diseases that account for approximately 17% of the estimated global burden of infectious diseases, with approximately 700, 000 attributable deaths each year.
The epidemic of Zika (2016), Chikungunya (2014) and other mosquito-borne disease threats show the need to have robust regional health security systems, especially since many CMS depend on tourism as a major source of revenue. (The total direct losses to the tourism sector due to Zika is estimated at approximately US$1.8 billion, or 0.21% of Gross Domestic Product for the 2015-2017 period.) The possibility of an outbreak of Dengue-3 within the Region is quite possible since that particular serotype has not been in circulation for a while, resulting in the build-up of susceptible populations. There is therefore a need to strengthen the public health workforce and surveillance systems in the region to detect and respond to these public health threats.
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Objective of the Project:
The overall objective of the project of which this contract will be a part is as follows:
To contribute to the improvement of public health of the Caribbean population through a reduction in morbidity associated with Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases.
Results:
- Result 1: Inception Report, including a detailed Work Plan, developed and submitted for the approval of the Project Manager
- Result 2: Documents related to Zika and other arboviruses harvested for at least ten (10) CARPHA Member States (CMS)
- Result 3: Training in the use of the FI-Admin[2] software and MedCarib’s2 cataloguing and indexing procedures completed
- Result 4: Approved documents digitized
- Result 5: Documents indexed and uploaded onto CARPHA’s EvIDeNCe Portal
- Result 6: Draft Final Report submitted and accepted in accordance with the reporting requirements in section 7.1 of these Terms of Reference.
- Result 7: Final Report submitted and approved in accordance with the reporting requirements in section 7.1 of these Terms of Reference.
Eligibility.
If shortlisted and invited to submit a tender,
Participation in tender procedures managed by the beneficiary(ies) is open on equal terms to all natural who are nationals of and legal persons (participating either individually or in grouping-consortium – of tenderers) effectively established in a Member State or a country, territory or region mentioned as eligible by the relevant regulations/basic act governing the eligibility rules for the grant as per Annex A2a – PART II to the practical guide. https://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/prag/annexes.do?chapterTitleCode=A
Please check the link above to determine if you are eligible to apply. You can also email lalkhash@carpha.org to verify eligibility, this must be done before the deadline date to submit your Expression of Interest mentioned below.
Tenderers must state their nationality in their tenders and provide the usual proof of nationality under their national legislation.
The rule does not apply to the experts proposed under the service tenders financed by the grant.
Grounds for exclusion
If shortlisted and invited to submit a tender, tenderers must submit a signed declaration, included in the tender form, to the effect that they are not in any of the exclusion situations listed in Section 2.6.10.1. of the practical guide.
Tenderers included in the lists of EU restrictive measures (see Section 2.4. of the PRAG) at the moment of the award decision cannot be awarded the contract.
You can access the PRAG and Declaration form 14A at https://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/prag/annexes.do?chapterTitleCode=A
“Practical Guide to Contract Procedures for EU External Actions” (“PRAG”)
Protection of personal data
Processing of personal data related to this procedure by the contracting authority takes place in accordance with the national legislation of the state of the contracting authority and with the provisions of the respective financing agreement.
The Request for Expression of Interest (REOI), the tender procedure and the contract relate to an external action funded by the EU, represented by the European Commission. If processing your reply to the invitation to tender involves transfer of personal data (such as names, contact details and CVs) to the European Commission, they will be processed solely for the purposes of the monitoring of the procurement procedure and of the implementation of the contract by the Commission, for the latter to comply with its obligations under the applicable legislative framework and under the financing agreement concluded between the EU and the Partner Country without prejudice to possible transmission to the bodies in charge of monitoring or inspection tasks in application of EU law. For the part of the data transferred by the contracting authority to the European Commission, the controller for the processing of personal data carried out within the Commission is
the head of legal affairs unit of DG International Cooperation and Development.
Details concerning processing of your personal data by the Commission are available on the privacy statement at:
In cases where you are processing personal data in the context of participation to a tender (e.g. CVs of both key and technical experts) and/or implementation of a contract (e.g. replacement of experts) you shall accordingly inform the data subjects of the details of the processing and communicate the above mentioned privacy statement to them.
Objective of the contract:
The objective of this contract is as follows:
To increase availability of research and grey literature on Zika and other arboviruses, for at
least ten (10) CARPHA Member States, through CARPHA’s EvIDeNCe Portal
SELECTION CRITERIA
For Legal and Natural Persons
Key expert 1: Team Leader (Library Science Specialist)
Qualifications and skills
- At least a master’s degree in Library Science or a related field.
General professional experience
- At least three (3) years’ experience working with metadata and document digitization;
- At least three (3) years’ experience working with Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR2) cataloguing standards, and quality control in a digital environment;
- Experience managing similar projects
Specific professional experience
- At least three (3) years demonstrated project management experience
- At least three (3) years demonstrated experience working with digital asset management, digital repository or digital library systems
All experts must be independent and free from conflicts of interest in the responsibilities they take on.
The profiles of the non-key experts for this contract are as follows:
Key Expert 2 – Knowledge Harvester
Qualifications and Skills:
- Bachelor’s degree, in Health Sciences or a related field
General Professional Experience
- At least five (5) years’ work experience in a public health, preferably in the Caribbean region
- Good computer skills
- Excellent communication skills
Specific Professional Experience
- At least two (2) years’ work experience in arranging and describing primary source materials
- Ability to interview senior officials and to initiate and facilitate collaboration as demonstrated by involvement in similar projects
- A sound understanding of public health issues in the Caribbean, particularly those related to Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases, as demonstrated by involvement in similar projects dealing with public health issues
- Demonstrated organizational, analytical, decision-making, problem-solving and planning skills
- Familiarity and experience with library systems will be an asset
IMPLEMENTATION
The indicative period of the contract is: April/May 2023 witha duration oftwelve (12) months.
INVITATION
CARPHA invites eligible consultants to indicate their interest in providing the services. Interested consultants must provide information indicating that they are qualified to perform the services (CV’s, brochures, description of similar assignments, experience in similar conditions, availability of appropriate skills among staff, business profile, etc.). Suitably qualified consultants will be short-listed and invited to tender for the Project through a competitive procedure.
DEADLINE FOR SUBMITTING EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST
Expressions of interest must be delivered in English by email to the address below by
Friday 3rd March, 2023 Atlantic Standard Time (AST) to:
E-mail: lalkhash@CARPHA.ORG
Sharda Lal-Khanai
Procurement Officer
Caribbean Public Health Agency
16-18 Jamaica Boulevard
Federation Park
St. Clair.
PORT OF SPAIN
Following the assessment of the Expressions of Interest submitted, a shortlist of not less than three, and not more than eight applicants will be provided with the terms of reference and invited to submit technical and financial proposals. The proposal will be evaluated by a committee set up for this specific consultancy and the outcome officially communicated to all tenderers.
CARPHA reserves the right to reject late applications or to cancel the present invitation partially or in its entirety. It will not be bound to assign any reason for not short-listing any applicant and will not defray any costs incurred by any applicant in the preparation and submission of Expressions of Interest.
[1] Franklinos, Lydia H. V., Jones, Kate E., Redding, David W., Abubakar, Ibrahim (2019). The effect of global change on mosquito-borne disease. The Lancet. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(19)30161-6.
[2]FI-Admin is a web-based software developed by BIREME. It is used as a management system for their Virtual Health Library (VHL) information sources and facilitates the creation bibliographic records according to the LILACS—Latin American and Caribbean Health Science —standard. BIREME is The Latin American and Caribbean Centre on Health Sciences, also known by its original name Regional Library of Medicine (BIREME, acronym in Portuguese). It is a specialized centre of PAHO/WHO oriented to technical cooperation in scientific health information).
2MedCarib is a bibliographic database on Caribbean Health Sciences literature and is one of the VHL sources.