Sustainable Immunization Supply Chain Financing Consultant, Programme Group, Health Section, Remote – Req 590825

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Consultancy Title: Sustainable Immunization Supply Chain Financing Consultant 

Section/Division/Duty Station: Programme Group/Health Section

Duration: 15 February 2026 – 30 June 2026

Home/ Office Based: Remote

About UNICEF 

If you are a committed, creative professional and are passionate about making a lasting difference for children, the world’s leading children’s rights organization would like to hear from you. For 70 years, UNICEF has been working on the ground in 190 countries and territories to promote children’s survival, protection and development. The world’s largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments. UNICEF has over 12,000 staff in more than 145 countries.

BACKGROUND

Purpose of Activity/ Assignment:

Providing immunization services with traditional and new vaccines have been shown to be a game-changing public health intervention, preventing vaccine-preventable diseases and mortalities and contributing to overall health and wellbeing. 

Asides procurement of vaccines and associated commodities (which have increased over time), effective in-country immunization supply chains are critical to ensuring timely availability of adequate quantities of potent vaccines at all fixed, outreach and mobile service delivery points-and to overall achievement of immunization programme goals. In addition to in-country contextual challenges, the burden on immunization supply chains continually increases with higher number of antigens that immunization programmes introduce. Thus, to ensure that this is achieved sustainably, adequate and well-timed financing of in-country immunization supply chain functions are critical.  

However, while there’s been much progress with (sustainable) immunization financing, this is often synonymous with vaccine/commodities procurement. Supply chain (end to end functions) financing is often not holistically considered, resulting in sub-optimal and in some cases regressive supply chain financing practices, which are worse at the last mile.  

For example, while higher supply chain level cold rooms are typically well thought out, associated commodities’ stores are often afterthoughts. Similarly, dedicated financing for distribution, for stock management tools, or for effective maintenance or appropriate waste management systems etc. are often unavailable especially between districts and service delivery points (last mile) while supply chain human resources and their capacity and skills needs are not always prioritized. Where these gaps occur, they contribute to supply chain inefficiencies, sub-optimal vaccine availability and stock-outs (and eventually low coverage and inequities), higher out of pocket expenditures for supply chain functions by health workers, exposure of vaccines to temperature variations, and negative environmental impacts.  

The Vaccine & Cold Chain Management workstream in UNICEF’s Health Centre of Excellence (CoE) will operationalize UNICEF’s Immunization Roadmap, Health Strategy 2030 and the new Gavi Alliance 6.0 iSC and Health systems strategy, providing technical expertise and support to countries in vaccine and cold chain management, including supply chain inputs into immunization strategy costing (such as within the National Immunization Strategy, NIS) and initiatives such as vaccine prioritization and optimization (VPOP). To achieve this, UNICEF is seeking a Sustainable Immunization Supply Chain Financing Consultant to support development of sustainable immunization supply chain financing guidance, including appropriate tools for end-to-end costing of immunization supply chain needs, to deploy these in the development of a global immunization supply chain business case (for a subset of interventions) as well as to support operationalization of the tools to support full costing of in-country supply chains. The consultancy assignment will be supervised by the Senior Adviser, Vaccine and Cold Chain Management Unit and the consultants will collaborate with a wide range of partners in iSC2, regions and countries.

Scope of Work:

Under the supervision of the Senior Adviser, Vaccine and Cold Chain Management Unit, the Sustainable Immunization Supply Chain Financing Consultant will: 

1. Use a standard set of inputs against broad immunization supply chain functions, to develop methodologies and guidance for sustainable immunization supply chain costing, prioritization, budgeting, financing, and disbursement. 
2. Contribute inputs for developing contextual scenario-based multi-year immunization (end-to-end) supply chain functions’ costs and budgets and strengthen sustainable financing (based on review and factoring of national health/immunization budgets and strategies, prioritized antigens in national schedules, potential sources, and stakeholders’ engagements) and disbursement (linkages with in-country legislative and funds transfer processes). 
3. Leverage contextual and applicable case studies to highlight successful principles for ensuring sustainable prioritization, budgeting, financing and disbursement of costed immunization supply chain. 
4. Use methodologies and tools to develop a global immunization supply chain business case for a subset of high priority interventions, which support global resource mobilization efforts.  
5. Support COEs and (up to five representative) countries to operationalize sustainable immunization supply chain financing strategies, including facilitating onboarding sessions (dedicated support or remote) for COE and countries’ capacity building on the sustainable immunization supply chain financing guidance, methodologies, tools, and practices. 
6. Support countries’ CVM gaps analysis, including rationale and the development of the supply chain components of Gavi applications and cash grants. 
7. Develop and share evidence of development and operationalization of sustainable immunization supply chain financing guidance, methodologies, tools, and practices. 

Terms of Reference / Key Deliverables:

Travel – Estimated $15,000

Qualifications

Education:

• Advanced University Degree (Masters) in Health Economics, Public Health, Supply Chain Management, Business Management, Engineering, or other relevant fields. 

Work experience:

Knowledge/Expertise/Skills required *:

• At least eight (8) years’ experience in health economics, public health, supply chain management or business management 
• Experience in immunization and immunization supply chain  
• Experience in costing, financing, budgeting, and disbursement analysis 
• Familiarity with in-country immunization supply chain processes and strengthening such as stock and logistics management, inventory policies, allocation, ordering and distribution strategies, temperature monitoring, waste management and other supply chain operations 
• Very good and broad expertise with spreadsheet-based Application tools development  
• Demonstrated quantitative skills 
• Good writing and oral presentation skills 

Language Proficiency: 

• Proficiency in spoken and written English is required.  
• Proficiency in spoken and written French is required  
• Knowledge of other UN languages is an asset. 
•  

Requirements:

Completed profile in UNICEF’s e-Recruitment system and

– Upload copy of academic credentials

– Financial proposal that will include/ reflect :

• • the costs per each deliverable and the total lump-sum for the whole assignment (in US$) to undertake the terms of reference.
  • travel costs and daily subsistence allowance, if internationally recruited or travel is required as per TOR.
  • Any other estimated costs: visa, health insurance, and living costs as applicable.
  • Indicate your availability

– Any emergent / unforeseen duty travel and related expenses will be covered by UNICEF.

– At the time the contract is awarded, the selected candidate must have in place current health insurance coverage.

– Payment of professional fees will be based on submission of agreed satisfactory deliverables. UNICEF reserves the right to withhold payment in case the deliverables submitted are not up to the required standard or in case of delays in submitting the deliverables on the part of the consultant.

U.S. Visa information:

With the exception of the US Citizens, G4 Visa and Green Card holders, should the selected candidate and his/her household members reside in the United States under a different visa, the consultant and his/her household members are required to change their visa status to G4, and the consultant’s household members (spouse) will require an Employment Authorization Card (EAD) to be able to work, even if he/she was authorized to work under the visa held prior to switching to G4.  

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF’s core values of Commitment, Diversity and Integrity and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results. View our competency framework at: Here

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment. 

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check. 

Remarks:  

Individuals engaged under a consultancy will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants. Consultants are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws. 

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully-vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.