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National Consultant to assess the impact of COVID-19 on the healthcare supply chain in Ukraine

Home Based - May require travel

  • Organization: UNDP - United Nations Development Programme
  • Location: Home Based - May require travel
  • Grade: Consultancy - National Consultant - Locally recruited Contractors Agreement
  • Occupational Groups:
    • Public Health and Health Service
    • Development Cooperation and Sustainable Development Goals
    • Logistics
    • Ebola
    • HIV, Health and Development
    • Supply Chain
    • Malaria, Tuberculosis and other infectious diseases
    • Innovations for Sustainable Development
    • Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
  • Closing Date: Closed

Background

The health of humans is intrinsically connected to environmental health. Therefore, in addressing SDG 3 – Good health and well-being, a multisectoral approach should be employed which addresses the barriers to health which are generated by the healthcare sector; whether it be through the negative impacts generated by the implementation of health programmes, the healthcare sector itself, or the production and life-cycle of medical commodities. The UNDP led Sustainable Procurement in the Health Sector (SPHS) initiative aims to promote sustainable procurement of health commodities and contributes to sustainable health systems and economies. As part of the SPHS initiative, the Sustainable Health in Procurement Project (SHiPP) was developed to reduce harm to people and the environment caused by the manufacture and disposal of medical products, and by the implementation of health programmes; launched in 2018, Ukraine is among the 10 project countries. As part of the SHiPP project, UNDP Ukraine has committed to the promotion of sustainable procurement to ensure that the products and services purchased are as sustainable as possible, with the lowest environmental impact and most positive social results.

Starting from the beginning of 2020 when first cases of COVID were diagnosed, Ukraine continues to battle with the severe, adverse social and economic consequences of the pandemic. It has triggered a decline in human development and hit the poorest, women and socially excluded the hardest. While the country was already off-track to meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the pandemic is a massive setback for achieving the SDGs by 2030.

While early reports reveal more men are dying as a result of COVID-19, the health of women generally is adversely impacted through the reallocation of resources and priorities, including sexual and reproductive health services. As the COVID-19 pandemic deepens economic and social stress coupled with restricted movement and social isolation measures, gender-based violence is increasing exponentially. Many women are being forced to ‘lockdown’ at home with their abusers at the same time that services to support survivors are being disrupted or made inaccessible.

All of these impacts are further amplified in contexts of fragility, conflict, and emergencies where social cohesion is already undermined, and institutional capacity and services are limited. The pandemic has exposed the country’s pre-existing social, economic and environmental vulnerabilities and reinforced the importance of the overarching principle of the 2030 Agenda of “leaving no one behind”. Understanding how these vulnerabilities shape the impact of pandemic is critical to designing policies.

In this connection an uninterrupted healthcare supply chain and comprehensive provision of medical services is crucial for the appropriate functioning of almost all spheres of life of each society. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, countries across the world went into lockdown, shutting down or reducing transport within and between them. This affected the national health procurement processes, manufacturing, supply and distribution of medicines and medical products, leading to constraints in the global medicines supply chain. These developments affected Ukraine as well.

Demand also increased for some medicines used in patients with COVID-19. These included some anaesthetics, antibiotics and muscle relaxants, as well as some medicines used off-label. This contributed to shortages.

Although the supply situation has improved since May 2020, global supply challenges remain. These are mainly due to:

  • decreased manufacturing capacity
  • logistical and transport challenges
  • increased purchasing costs

All of these have affected Ukraine quite heavily. To adequately react to the aforementioned challenges and to ensure a comprehensive mechanism of dealing with the arising situations at country level and ensure a long-term sustainability, a system for continuous monitoring of the healthcare supply chain should be in place. It should analyze supply chain management practices in an integrated and detailed manner and consider all sustainable performance dimensions. There should be a framework for identifying the supply chain management practices that may contribute to sustainable performance throughout the healthcare system. The proposed framework should take as a common denominator the impact of COVID-19 and investigate the categories of management practices, which include strategic management and leadership, supplier management, purchasing, warehousing and inventory, transportation and distribution, information and technology, energy, water, food, hospital design, waste, and customer relationship management. On the other hand, performance categories should also include economic, environmental, and social factors. Moreover, illustrative effects of practices on performance must be described.

To this effect UNDP aims to provide support to the Government of Ukraine by assessing the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the healthcare supply chain and is looking for a qualified consultant to implement the assessment.

Duties and Responsibilities

2. MAIN OBJECTIVES OF THE ASSIGNMENT

This main objective of this assignment is to assess the impact of COVID-19 on the healthcare supply chain in Ukraine in collaboration with WHO and explore opportunity for strengthening sustainability and to provide policy recommendations and multisectoral risk mitigation strategies.

 

3. DESCRIPTION OF RESPONSIBILITIES / SCOPE OF WORK

The Consultant will be responsible for conducting the following activities in order to achieve the overall goal of the assignment:

  • Develop or propose an existing methodology that is tailored to Ukraine for assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on the healthcare supply chain, managed by State-owned Enterprise Medical Procurement of Ukraine, international specialized organisations and the donor technical assistance (i.e. Global Fund, USAID).
  • Conduct an assessment based on the methodology with a detailed (and where possible statistical inference) analysis of the data.
  • Review how to strengthen sustainability within the healthcare supply chain system of Ukraine
  • Prepare a report, a brief and a PowerPoint presentation in English and Ukrainian on the findings. The structure of the report should be proposed by the consultant and approved by UNDP and reflect the findings of the analysis. The report should not only identify problematic issues but should also capture potential positive strategies and approaches that have worked – contributing to sustainability of the health supply chains so that these could be subsequently replicated/scaled up in the future and in the case of other pandemics.
  • Develop policy recommendations for improving the healthcare supply chain to make it more robust, sustainable and enduring. A special emphasis of the recommendations should fall on preventive and mitigation actions for risks that arise from the appearance of sudden epidemiological jeopardies and the ensuing impediments.

 

4. DELIVERABLES

Deliverable #

Task description

Deadline

1

A document with a detailed and tailored to Ukraine methodology on assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on the healthcare supply chain.

15 August, 2021

2

A document describing the analysis that has been conducted and the results obtained with attached calculations, source documents and statistical analysis where relevant (at least 20 pages, Myriad Pro 11).

5 September, 2021

3

Report (at least 30 pages, Myriad Pro 11), brief and PowerPoint presentation in English and Ukrainian describing the impact of COVID-19 on the healthcare supply chain in Ukraine and policy recommendations and multisectoral risk mitigation strategies for improving the healthcare supply chain to make it more robust, sustainable and resilient.

31 September, 2021

4

Conduct presentation of the report during a webinar in sustainability issues

15 October, 2021

 

5. COPYRIGHT

The Deliverables shall be submitted in English (and Ukrainian). The title rights, copyrights and all other rights whatsoever nature in any material produced under the provisions of this TOR will be vested exclusively in UNDP.

 

6. MONITORING/REPORTING REQUIREMENTS

Work-progress reporting/monitoring meetings will be held with the National Consultant on a regular basis. UNDP will be the final authority to control the quality and evaluate the work. No reports or documents should be published or distributed to third parties without prior approval of the UNDP.  The consultant will work under the overall supervision of the Programme Specialist. The consultant will interact with Project Associate, Chief Technical Advisor and CO staff to receive any clarifications and guidance that may be needed. He/she will also receive all necessary informational and logistical support from UNDP Country Office and the Project. On a day-to-day basis, consultant’s work will be supervised by the Chief Technical Advisor.

The satisfactory completion of each of the deliverables shall be subject to endorsement of the chief Technical Advisor and Programme Specialist.

The Consultant will duly inform UNDP of any problems, issues or delays arising in the course of implementation of assignment and take necessary steps to address them.

All reports and results are to be submitted to the UNDP in electronic form (*.docx, *.xlsx, *.pptx, and *.pdf or other formats accepted by UNDP).

 

7. PROPOSED PAYMENT METHOD

Payments will be made in 2 tranches according to the following payment schedule:

  • upon satisfactory submission of deliverable #1 and #2 – 50%
  • upon satisfactory submission of deliverable #3-4 – 50%

 

8. MANAGEMENT ARRANGEMENTS

The consultant shall be responsible for managing the process of the work implementation, its resources, logistics and expenditures related to the tasks in a timely and accurate manner. The consultant will be reporting to Health Programme Specialist with cross-functional reporting responsibilities to Chief Technical Advisor.

Competencies

  • Demonstrate/safeguard ethics and integrity;  
  • Demonstrate corporate knowledge and sound judgment;
  • Self-development, initiative-taking;
  • Act as a team player;
  • Encourage and participate in open communication in the team, communicate effectively;
  • Create synergies through self-control;
  • Manage conflict;
  • Informed and transparent decision-making.

Required Skills and Experience

9. EXPERIENCE AND QUALIFICATIONS REQUIREMENTS

Minimum qualifications and experience:

Education:

  • Advanced university degree in Health Economics, Public Health or other relevant discipline with a training/specialization in healthcare supply chain

Experience: 

  • Knowledge of the healthcare supply chain in Ukraine proved by minimum of 1 year of experience working in the field of procurement of medicines/medical devices and/or medical logistics
  • Previous experience in impact of assessment
  • Proficiency in Ukrainian and/or Russian

 

10. DOCUMENTS TO BE INCLUDED WHEN SUBMITTING THE PROPOSALS

Applicants shall submit the following documents:

Required

 

 

 

Letter of interest/proposal, explaining why the applicant considers him- or herself the most suitable for the work with links to at least 3 reports on impact assessment

 

Personal CV in the form of P11, including information about past experience in similar projects / assignments and contact details for referees.

 

 

 

Financial proposal

At least, two published impact assessment projects implemented where the candidate has been the lead

11. EVALUATION

  • Advanced university degree (Bachelor`s degree - 9 pts, Master`s degree - 15 pts)
  • Knowledge of the healthcare supply chain in Ukraine proved by minimum of 1 year of experience working in the field of procurement of medicines/medical devices and/or medical logistics (1 year of experience in the sphere - 15pts, 2 years and more - 20 pts)
  • Previous experience in impact of assessment (2 examples of assessments provided – 15 pts, 3 and more examples of assessments provided - 25 pts)
  • Proficiency in Ukrainian and/or Russian (10 pts).

 

Cumulative analysis

Contract award shall be made to the incumbent whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:

a) responsive/compliant/acceptable, and

b) having received the cumulative highest score out of a pre-determined set of weighted technical and financial criteria specific to the solicitation.

* Technical Criteria weight: 70%

* Financial Criteria weight: 30%

Only candidates obtaining a minimum 70% from the maximum available technical score (49 points) would be considered for the Financial Evaluation

The maximum number of points assigned to the financial proposal is allocated to the lowest price proposal and will equal to 30. All other price proposals will be evaluated and assigned points, as per below formula:

30 points [max points available for financial part] x [lowest of all evaluated offered prices among responsive offers] / [evaluated price].

The proposal obtaining the overall cumulatively highest score after adding the score of the technical proposal and the financial proposal will be considered as the most compliant offer and will be awarded a contract.

Travel

In the case of unforeseeable travel, payment of travel costs including tickets, lodging and terminal expenses should be agreed upon, between the respective business unit and the Consultant, prior to travel and will be reimbursed. In general, UNDP should not accept travel costs exceeding those of an economy class ticket. Should the IC wish to travel on a higher class he/she should do so using their own resources.

This vacancy is now closed.
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