EPIDEMIOLOGIST (2)

General Summary

The Epidemiologist leads disease surveillance, data analysis, and outbreak investigation activities within an assigned area, ensuring timely detection, verification, and response to public health events at Points of Entry (PoE) and border communities. The role provides technical leadership to district and PoE-level teams and ensures high-quality epidemiological data informs decision-making.

Key Responsibilities

Provide technical leadership across all seven surveillance sub-pillars within the assigned area:

  • Alert Management: Oversee triage, verification, and timely closure of all alerts received through community, event-based, and indicator-based surveillance channels, including alert desks, hotlines, and e-registers, in line with national turnaround timelines.
  • Case Investigation & Contact Tracing: Lead case investigation for suspected, probable, and confirmed cases (including BEVD), and supervise contact listing, tracing, and daily monitoring of contacts for the full 21-day follow-up period.
  • Active Case Search: Coordinate active case search in high-risk communities and health facilities to identify missed or unreported cases and strengthen case ascertainment.
  • Community-Based Surveillance: Supervise and mentor Village Health Teams (VHTs), CHEWs, and other community actors on community-based and event-based surveillance, alert notification, and referral pathways.
  • Facility-Based Surveillance: Support integrated facility-based surveillance in health facilities, mentoring facility surveillance focal persons on case detection, screening, e-registers, and IDSR/eIDSR reporting.
  • Mortality Surveillance: Coordinate mortality surveillance and verification of community and facility deaths, ensuring linkage with Safe and Dignified Burial (SDB) teams for suspected/confirmed BEVD deaths and other notifiable deaths.
  • Points of Entry (PoE) Surveillance: Support surveillance and screening activities at gazetted and informal Points of Entry, including data review, quality checks, and follow-up on cross-border alerts.

Other Responsibilities

  • Analyze surveillance and population connectivity (PopCAB) data to identify trends, hotspots, and cross-border transmission risks.
  • Prepare and disseminate accurate daily/weekly epidemiological reports and alerts to district, regional, and national health authorities.
  • Lead the development, quality assurance, and timely dissemination of daily/weekly BEVD Situation Reports (SitReps) to the District Task Force, Emergency Operations Centre (EOC), and national/regional stakeholders during an active response, ensuring consistency with surveillance and line-list data.
  • Support Points of Entry capacity assessments and joint national/regional/district technical support supervision visits.
  • Represent the project at regional and cross-border coordination meetings (e.g., Uganda–DRC, Uganda–South Sudan).
  • Ensure timely and complete entry of field and hardcopy surveillance data into national systems (e.g., DHIS2, eIDSR).
  • Support ring vaccination micro-planning and target-list verification where BEVD vaccination is deployed.
  • Contribute to preparedness planning, risk communication activities, and after-action reviews.
  • Ensure epidemiological and programmatic reports meet CDC/USG donor reporting requirements and timelines, including required indicators, data quality standards, and supporting documentation.

Cross-Cutting Responsibilities

  • Attend and actively contribute to Surveillance Pillar meetings, ensuring activities are aligned and coordinated across all seven surveillance sub-pillars.
  • Attend weekly Incident Management Team (IMT) meetings to report progress, flag challenges, and receive and cascade guidance to field and Points of Entry teams.
  • Participate in surveillance sub-pillar coordination meetings to synchronize activities, resolve bottlenecks, and ensure consistent application of case definitions and protocols across pillars.

Academic Qualifications

  • ? Bachelor's degree in Medicine, Public Health, Nursing, Veterinary Medicine, or a related field; a Master's degree in Epidemiology or Public Health is strongly preferred.

Person Specification

  • Bachelor's degree in Medicine, Public Health, Nursing, Veterinary Medicine, or a related field; a Master's degree in Epidemiology or Public Health is strongly preferred.
  • Minimum of three to five years' experience in disease surveillance, outbreak response, or field epidemiology.
  • Field Epidemiology Training Programme (FETP) certification is an added advantage.
  • Proficiency in epidemiological analysis tools (e.g., Epi Info, STATA, R) and health information systems (e.g., DHIS2).
  • Demonstrated experience working with Ministry of Health structures and cross-border health programs.
  • Excellent analytical, report-writing, and communication skills.
  • Willingness and ability to travel frequently to border districts and Points of Entry


More Details
EPI X001
2
TDB
Full-time
6 Months
SURVEILLANCE COORDINATOR
2026-10-06 11:05:22.000







SURVEILLANCE COORDINATOR


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Job Description 2: Postdoctoral Fellow in Pathogen Genomics (One Health Focus)

  • Position Title:  Postdoctoral Fellow – Pathogen Genomics
  • Department: Global Health Security
  • Project: Professor Sewankambo Global Health Security Training Program in Africa
  • Reports To: Deputy Head of Department 
  • Duration: One year, renewable
  • Location: IDI-McKinnell MKC, Makerere University Campus
  • Application Deadline:  Two weeks after the advert date

Position Overview

We are seeking a dynamic Postdoctoral Fellow with expertise in pathogen genomics to strengthen our global health security program, with a particular emphasis on One Health approaches. The role integrates genomics applications with practical contributions to business development, scientific documentation, and program implementation to combat infectious diseases at the human-animal-environment interface.

ACCEPT-Africa Targeted Research Awards for Epidemic and Pandemic Preparedness

Background

The African Consortium for Clinical Evidence, Pharmacology and Translational Research (ACCEPT-Africa) is a multidisciplinary, multi-country research consortium under the Africa Pandemic Sciences Collaborative (EPSILON-1). Led by the Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI), Makerere University, Uganda, ACCEPT-Africa brings together research institutions and investigators from Uganda, Tanzania (Kibong’oto Infectious Diseases Hospital), the Democratic Republic of Congo (Catholic University of Bukavu), South Africa (University of Cape Town), and Italy (University of Turin) to strengthen Africa's capacity to develop, evaluate, and deploy medical countermeasures for epidemic- and pandemic-prone diseases.

ACCEPT-Africa integrates expertise in early-phase clinical trials, clinical pharmacology, pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics (PK/PD), implementation science, infectious diseases, laboratory sciences, regulatory science, and epidemic preparedness.

The consortium is guided by three strategic objectives:

  1. Advance the clinical development of medical countermeasures targeting priority pathogens;
  2. Strengthen epidemic–pandemic research ecosystems; and
  3. Build sustainable capacity for early-phase clinical trials targeting priority pathogens.

To advance these objectives, ACCEPT-Africa invites applications from individual researchers for Targeted Research Awards addressing priority scientific and operational gaps relevant to medical countermeasure development and epidemic clinical research.

Purpose of the Call

The ACCEPT-Africa Targeted Research Awards will provide catalytic funding for focused, high-impact and implementation-oriented research projects that can generate preliminary evidence, address critical knowledge or methodological gaps, strengthen existing research platforms, and contribute to the development and evaluation of medical countermeasures for priority pathogens.

A total of three awards will be available, with funding of up to US$15,000 per project for an implementation period of up to 12 months.

The call is specifically intended to support research that can leverage existing ACCEPT-Africa platforms, cohorts, protocols, laboratory capabilities, partnerships and research infrastructure to achieve clearly defined outputs within the award period.

Applicants must submit a proposal addressing one of the three priority research areas below.

Priority Research Areas

Priority Area 1: Pharmacokinetics of drugs used for diseases of outbreak potential

Priority Area 2: Biomarkers and diagnostics for drug development which could be viral, immunological or other markers that can be used to assess treatment response or severity of highly infectious diseases of outbreak potential

Priority Area 3: Social and Behavioral Research on Epidemic Clinical Trials

Funding Available

ACCEPT-Africa intends to make three competitive research awards, subject to satisfactory scientific review and availability of funds.

Maximum Award

Each successful project may receive funding of up to US$15,000.

Applicants are expected to submit realistic and well-justified budgets directly linked to the proposed research activities and outputs.

Eligible costs may include research personnel support, laboratory reagents and consumables, sample processing and analysis, data collection, participant-related research costs, field activities, data management and analysis, stakeholder/community engagement directly related to the research, and dissemination of findings.

Major capital equipment and costs not directly attributable to delivery of the proposed research should generally not constitute a substantial proportion of the requested budget.

Application Requirements

Applicants should submit a concise application package containing:                  

  1. CV and personal statement (use the NIH template)
  2. 2 letters of recommendations (ACCEPT-Africa site PI and one proposed mentor)
  3. Proposal (download the template.docx)
  4. Budget (maximum US$15,000)

Key Timelines

Milestone

Date/Period

Call opens

September 2026

Application deadline

16th October 2026

Scientific and technical review

November 2026

Notification of successful applicants

Late November 2026

Anticipated project commencement

December 2026

Applications must be received by 16th October 2026. Late or substantially incomplete applications will not be considered.