ARCHITECTURAL FIRM FOR DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION SUPERVISION OF VACCINE STORES IN THE 9 DISTRICTS OF LESOTHO

1. BACKGROUND AND JUSTIFICATION

The Effective Vaccine Management Assessment (EVMA) conducted in 2018 highlighted good infrastructure across all the three levels of supply chain: National, District and Health facility. The scores for Criterion 8 of the EVMA "Buildings, equipment and transport" attained were 80%, 89% and 83% respectively. Although the national performance was commendable, there were 6 of the 10 districts that presented challenges related to infrastructure, including: Maseru, Mohale#s Hoek, Qacha's Nek, Thaba-Tseka, Quthing and Mafeteng.

Maseru district serves the largest population in the country with the highest number of public and private health facilities. Based on the cold chain capacity requirements for Maseru, there is a dire need for proper with a walk-in room. The other five districts are in the highlands where there are challenges such as snow in winter leading to power cuts and making the districts vaccine store inaccessible by road.

The scores were based on availability of adequate space for storage of equipment and supplies, offices space for the store manager, availability of generators etc. This situation has become even more challenging due to the COVID-19 vaccination rollout, augmenting the need for additional space. While the Government of Lesotho is currently constructing the Maseru District Vaccine Store (DVS), there remains an urgent need to construct or rehabilitate the other nine district vaccine stores to ensure adequate supplies and vaccines are safely stored to respond to emerging needs brought about by the COVID-19 vaccination rollout in addition to routine immunization. UNICEF Lesotho is currently planning to implement rehabilitation/construction project of nine DVS in coordination with the Ministry of Health Expanded Programme of Immunization (EPI) and Estate Department teams, as well as District Health Management Teams (DHMT).

Therefore, UNICEF requires expertise of national Architectural Firm to design and provide construction supervision activities. Functional vaccine stores will ensure that adequate supplies and vaccines are safely stored to respond to emerging needs brought about by the COVID-19 vaccination rollout in addition to routine immunization. To that aim, UNICEF Lesotho will construct Vaccine Stores in the 9 districts of Lesotho except for Maseru, as detailed in a Scope of the Work in the next section. The objective of these Terms of Reference is to guide a bidding exercise to identify suitable architectural firm for the procurement of engineering services required for this construction project.