Shwari Health Cameroon is a locally registered organization with a vision to ensure the provision of quality, effective and innovative evidence-based solutions to address health systems challenges within the Health sector in Cameroon and beyond with a special focus to children and adolescents. To achieve this, Shwari Health Cameroon uses proven community strategies to identify HIV infected children and adolescents , refer them to health facilities for initiation on treatment , support and accompany them through treatment to ensure they remain in care and achieve viral suppression. Our mission is to be one of the most sought-after implementation science association in Cameroon that uses evidence-based strategies to effectively cover the ‘Know-Do’ gaps in the provision of health services. We aim to achieve this through the application of modern evidence generation and synthesis methods to understand operational contexts so as to devise strategies that could make the implementation efforts more effective and efficient. We are constantly expanding our expertise to ensure that our pooled experience is adequate to be responsive to the changing needs in health service provision. Our team has in depth knowledge and experience in working in the Cameroon local healthcare system, at all levels from community to policy making at national and subnational levels. By applying different innovative approaches such as multisectoral collaborations, data analytics and Continuous Quality Improvement, we have been able to understand organizational processes and barriers to effective implementation of various community interventions aimed at improving access to health services by children and adolescents.

Position Title: Psychosocial Agent 

Reports to: Shwari Health Cameroon Program Director

Location of Work: Center & East Regions

Number of positions: 15

Its main objective is to support the health facility in community HIV testing and Linkage activities. It will help in increasing the coverage of ART for children and through HIV screening and testing as well as linking all HIV positives patients to lifelong antiretroviral treatment.

Specific Position Functions:

In collaboration with facility staff and under the supervision of the Program Director,  PSA provides HIV risk screening and testing for eligible children and adolescents at community. All who will be found positive will be linked to antiretroviral treatment. The PSA will also ensure Index testing is provided to all testing positive.

The Psychosocial Agent will ensure the following:

• HIV risk screening  at community level for children and adolescents in order to recruit people most exposed to HIV and find new PLHIV who do not know their status in this sub-population;
• HIV counseling and testing of all eligible clients in the community; conduct community activities aimed at enhancing case identification and linkage as necessary.
• Providing Index Testing to all HIV positive clients;
• Collaborate with facility staff to get line-lists and localization plans of all children elicited from positive mothers, all the children and adolescents who are siblings of HIV infected children, and follow them up in communities for counseling and testing and link all positive to treatment
• Ensure proper documentation in the national registers (index case register, screening register, quality assurance register and others ) of all services provided at community level.
• Collaborate with facility teams and partners teams to ensure adequate stock of HIV tests kits for every day community HIV testing for children and adolescents
• Physically accompany new HIV + patients to HIV treatment initiation at the facility
• List all Pre-ART children and adolescents (new HIV + patients who are not yet on antiretroviral therapy), track for initiating ART and document
• Participate in meetings between APS and ACRR / Data Clerk for the triangulation and validation of the data produced by each agent at the health facility during the day before the submission of reports;
• Make a daily summary report of the activities carried out from the screening register and the index case register;
• Make a daily report on the level of achievement of the indicators by sex and by age group;
• Participate in all planning and coordination meetings of the health facility and more specifically of the HIV care service to present progress reports.

Qualifications and Experience:

·       Nursing or laboratory training

·       At least 5 years of demonstrable experience in the field of community HIV testing

·       Proven experience in pediatric and adolescent community case identification, linkage and retention

·       Excellent counseling skills with experience dealing with children and adolescents.

·       Must be fluent in French, working knowledge of English preferable

Application Process

All Applications, including your resume, cover letter, copies of relevant diploma and list of minimum of 3 professional reference,  should be sent electronically at  shwarihealth.cm@gmail.com before October 10th 2023.

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