UNICEF Health Economics and Financing Internships in Kenya

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Most developing countries have relied and continue to rely on donors’ support to finance vaccines and provide immunization service. In the WHO/UNICEF Joint Reporting Form (JRF), countries are each year asked questions about their financing sources for vaccines and immunization delivery (Table 1). The large majority of countries report vaccines that are acquired through domestic budgets and those acquired through external support. They also largely report that they have a line item in the national budget for vaccines. Some countries may also have one or more line items for immunization delivery costs, such as printing of vaccination cards, vaccine transport and training. The reliability of the data collected from these questions is unknown.

Strong planning and budgeting for vaccines and immunization delivery is viewed as one of the most important foundations for ensuring financial sustainability especially in countries transitioning from GAVI and other donors’ support. One of the other important foundations is to ensure the provision of “traditional vaccines” through domestic (government) funding.

Ensuring that traditional vaccine is provided for in national budget is the initial and basic step on the road to financial sustainability for vaccines. Thus, monitoring this information is critical for the national, regional and global communities in their support to eligible countries. Beyond immunization expenditures, it is important to understand and monitor the share of such immunization and health expenditures as part of the total government expenditures, which reflect the level of priority for governments.

UNICEF Vaccine Financing team is currently offering an internship position to support its ongoing work on Immunization Financing and Sustainability (IFS) globally. Specifically, this component of the IFS team work intends to complement other ongoing work on vaccine budgeting and planning in the selected countries. The results will enable an assessment of the reliability of JRF data, as well as identify scope for further work on funding and supply for vaccines and immunization services, with an emphasis on financial sustainability.

During the internship period, the main tasks include the following:

Analytics of health and immunization data