WASHINGTON: The World Bank expects to support 50 poorest nations with $4 billion of financing by the middle of this year to fund the purchase and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines and strengthen their healthcare systems.
The Washington-based multilateral lender has approved $2bn in financing for 17 countries, it said in a statement on Wednesday.
Funding packages to developing countries, reeling from the economic shock of the pandemic, are being disbursed on “grant or highly concessional terms”.
“Access to vaccines is key to altering the course of the pandemic and helping countries move toward a resilient recovery,” David Malpass, World Bank president, said. “Our programmes are helping developing countries respond to the health emergency and have financing available for vaccines.”
The financing is part of the World Bank’s $12bn funding envelope over 24 months to help the developing countries acquire and distribute vaccines.
The World Bank’s vaccine finance package is designed to be flexible and can be used by countries to procure doses through Covax – the vaccine pillar of global collaboration to accelerate the development, production and access to Covid-19 tests and treatments – or through other sources.
The funding can also be used to strengthen health systems, including buying medical supplies, personal protective equipment, vaccine cold-chains, training health workers, outreach campaigns to key stakeholders which are key to ensure vaccination acceptance, the lender said.
The $2bn approved so far has supported mass inoculation programmes in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cabo Verde, Cote d’Ivoire, Ecuador, El Salvador, Eswatini, Ethiopia, the Gambia, Honduras, Lebanon, Mongolia, Nepal, Philippines, Rwanda, Tajikistan and Tunisia.
“As the world attempts to carry out the largest vaccination effort in history, we have stressed the need for countries with excess vaccine supplies to release them as soon as possible, and for financing commitments to Covax to be encashed,” Malpass said.
Although the outlook of the world economy has brightened on the back of a faster-than-expected bounce back in some developed economies and mass inoculation programmes, the recovery is uneven and less pronounced in the developing world.
Finances of debt-laden poor nations are already stretched, leaving them little room to rebuild their economies or strengthen their crumbling healthcare systems.
Both the IMF and the World Bank have extended concessional loans and grants to these countries to help them deal with the pandemic.
The World Bank said its private sector development arm, the International Finance Corporation, is also deploying $4bn through its health platform to increase the supply and local production of essential PPE in developing countries and unlock bottlenecks in emerging markets, particularly in medical equipment and vaccines.
