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The reach and scope of nutrition service delivery for women and children in Afghanistan have expanded significantly over the past two years. UNICEF's nutrition programs, including Maternal, Infant, and young Child Nutrition (MIYCN), Community Based Nutrition Program (CBNP), Multi Micronutrient Supplementation (MMS), Micronutrient Powder (MNP), Iron and Folic Acid (IFA) supplementation, have been scaled up across all 34 provinces. This rapid expansion underscores the critical need for national-level expertise to ensure effective program reporting, monitoring, and quality assurance.
UNICEF is supporting national MIYCN and caring practices as one of the major components of nutrition program targeting maternal Nutrition which refers to the nutrition of women during adolescence, pregnancy, and lactation, as it affects their health and the health of their foetus and/or infant, through their childbearing and nurturing roles, furthermore, the program is focusing on infant and young child feeding practices.
The consultant will report directly to UNICEF’s Nutrition Specialist at ACO contributing to the continuous improvement of program outcomes and data-driven interventions.
Scope of Work:
Provide technical support for MIYCN programming, including guideline development, service quality improvement, partner mapping, and capacity building training to strengthen nutrition outcomes at national and subnational levels.
Major Duties and Responsibilities:
- Provide technical support to MIYCN program across all players
- Provide technical support on development of the MIYCN guidelines for relevant strategies.
- Provide technical support to improve the quality of growth monitoring and promotion throughout the country
- Provide technical support implementation of nutrition interventions under BPHS/EPHS both at the facility and community level and prioritize nutrition activities which should be implemented by SPs under HER
- Support mapping of MIYCN and nutrition partners.
- Provide technical support to Maternal, infant and young child nutrition technical working group and follow up of the agreed action points and organize and conduct MIYCN taskforce meetings on the need bases and actively participate in MIYCN related events/conferences and coordination with the relevant sectorial ministries.
- Conduct nutrition counselors’ performance review on a quarterly basis and review the ToR of NCs and midwife on need basis.
- Ensure proper implementation of regulation of Breast milk substitute and support conducting the BMS national committee meetings.
- Provide of monthly activities report to line manager.
- Support development and dissemination of new operational guidelines and tools and ensuring the required coordination.
- Conduct training and mentoring for front-line workers,
- Technical support to run gap analysis across all 34 provinces and follow up of the nutrition indicators (MIYCN) at national and provincial level.