Afghanistan: Dev Design of Standard District Hospital &Comprehensive Health Center& technical assistance for capacity Building of Eng Department of MoPH

The Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) is a non-denominational international development agency established in 1967 by His Highness the Aga Khan. Its mission is to develop and promote creative solutions to problems that impede social development, primarily in Asia and East Africa. Created as a private, non-profit foundation under Swiss law, it has branches and independent affiliates in 19 countries.

AKF seeks to provide sustainable solutions to long-term problems of poverty, hunger, illiteracy, and ill health. In Afghanistan, AKF works with rural communities in mountainous, remote or resource poor areas to improve quality of life in the areas of natural resource management, market development, governance, education and health.

The Aga Khan Foundation, Afghanistan (AKF (Afg)) is an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), a group of international, private, non-denominational development agencies working to improve living conditions and opportunities for people in some of the poorest parts of the developing world. The Network’s organizations have individual mandates that range from the fields of health and education to architecture, rural development and promotion of private-sector enterprise and institutions that seek to empower communities and individuals, usually in disadvantaged circumstances, to improve living conditions and opportunities.

1. Rationale

The consultant will a) support engineering department of Ministry of Public Health in designing of a complete set of Standard District Hospital and a Comprehensive Health Center to reach the goal of sustainable, resilient, safe, coping with the needs of the communities and environmentally friendly health care facilities and b) providing technical assistance toward capacity building of Engineering Department of MoPH to better analyze, elaborate and further upgrade the hospital designs as per the need may require in the future.

2. Background

The Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) has developed a five-year Health Action Plan for Afghanistan (HAPA) that aims to improve the health status of men and women in selected provinces of Afghanistan, particularly women of reproductive age and children under five. AKDN-HAPA aims to achieve national impact through capacity building and collaboration with national institutions including the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH).

As part of the Technical Assistance to Ministry of Public Health under AKDN Health Action Plan for Afghanistan and considering the infrastructure work AKF in collaboration with MoPH identified that developing standard structure along with the designing capacity development of the MoPH personnel a critical area of interventions.

In 2003, engineering directorate of the Ministry of Public Health (MOPH) through financial support of USAID developed the design for district Hospital (DH), Comprehensive Health centers (CHCs) and Basic Health centers (BHCs). Now the demand to the health services is increased and the access is improved, therefore the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) would like to standardize the design and bring efficiency in operation & management along with having the Engineering Department team to be enabled to design and implement it. Hence AKF, as a committed and long term partner was requested to:

a) Support engineering department of Ministry of Public Health in designing of a complete set of Standard District Hospital and a Comprehensive Health Care Center to reach the goal of sustainable, resilient, safe, coping with the needs of the communities and environmentally friendly health care facilities and

b) Providing technical assistance toward capacity building of Engineering Department of MoPH to better analyze, elaborate and further upgrade the hospital designs as per the need may require in the future.

As the AKDN health action plan for Afghanistan aims to improve the quality and expand the range of health services in targeted remote and rural areas of Afghanistan by complementing the Basic Package of Health Services (BPHS) and Essential Package of Hospital Services (EPHS), expanding and improving the quality of government health and nutrition services, increasing the use of eHealth services, and enhancing health infrastructure.

AKF therefore has held discussions with engineering directorate and agreed to proceed with an internationally recognized consultant to provide the support toward the initiative. Furthermore AKF will request the applicant to develop an inception report describing the overall objective, brief methodology, the activity breakdown, timeline, analysis of the situation and possible impact including the possible achievements.

Tangible deliverables

The aim of the assignment is focusing on two components;

1) Designing Standard District Hospital and a Comprehensive Health Center and,

2) Providing technical assistance toward capacity building of MoPH’s Engineering Department to enable them in order to upgrade the hospital designs as per the needs of the country.

3. Responsibilities of Consulting Assignment

· Lead the developing process exercise.

· Develop a work plan for the process of designing District Hospital and Comprehensive Health Centers.

· Define project scope and approve changes to scope.

· Coordinate overall communication between experts, the consultant and stakeholders

· Preparation of the phase wise construction plan with site layout

· Work with the engineering team, review appropriate tools, and conduct a situational analysis on the current funding opportunity and application of proposed design in deferent location and regions.

· Interact with all concerned Ministry of Public Health departments (General Policy & Planning, Grant, Health Management Information System (HMIS) and Contract Service Management Unite (GCMU) to collect their input on the process and increasing demand for health services.

· Review and analyzing of the current design for both District Hospital and Comprehensive Health Centers and find out the sections need potential change.

· Involve the engineering relevant staff in deferent level of process.

· Build the staff capacity and share theoretical concepts to enable them to do the same exercise when required.

· Submission and presentation of the final draft of the designed documents (District Hospital and Comprehensive Health Centers) to senior MOPH officials.

4. Required Qualifications.

· Advanced university degree in relevant field

· Minimum 10 years of experience in the same field i.e. designing and scheming of health infrastructure.

· International experience in the similar field. Experience from the region is preferred.

· Extensive experience and proven track record in the theory and practice of designing and construction project.

· Good grounding in participatory facilitation skills and latest techniques in skills and knowledge transfer.

· Sensitivity to cultural diversity, good analytical, negotiating, and communication and advocacy skills, report writing skills

· Proficiency in standard office applications

· Excellent communication and technical skills

· Working experience with the national government and its structure.

5. Deliverables

· Fresh and adopted design of District Hospital and Comprehensive Health Centers

· Guidelines and manuals for the completing the process

· Build staff capacity through theoretical and practical session

6. Work location(s)

· Kabul with field trips to the northern regions

7. Schedule

· Development of Situation Analysis Report- 16 days.

· Development of DH and CHC Concept and Master plans- 12 days

· Preparation of Preliminary and final design and final consultancy Report for 2 Hospitals (District Hospital and CHC). – 42 days

· Capacity Building of Engineering Department of MoPH – 29 days

Total days: 99 (3 months overlapping)