NEW DELHI, Mar 4 (NNN-PTI) – The World Bank will provide a one-billion-U.S. dollar loan to India, to support the country’s health sector for pandemic preparedness and enhanced health service delivery, a finance ministry official said today.
The agreement signed between the government of India and the World Bank yesterday, consists of two complementary 500-million-dollar loans, each to support two projects, the Public Health Systems for Pandemic Preparedness Programme (PHSPPP) and the Enhanced Health Services Delivery Programme (EHSDP).
“The two projects are supporting India’s decision to increase the resilience and preparedness of the country’s health systems against future pandemics,” Auguste Tano Kouamé, the bank’s country director of India was quoted in a media release, as having said.
According to the World Bank, the 500-million-dollar PHSPPP will support the Indian government’s efforts, to prepare India’s surveillance system, to be ready to detect and report epidemics of potential international concern, ensure rapid response, and prevent emergence of pathogens.
It will also enhance India’s capacity to detect pathogens, including zoonotic diseases, to inform India’s bio-security response and commercialisation of new technologies, to prevent, detect or treat infectious diseases.
The project will also seek to strengthen coordination and build institutional capacity of core public health institutions, to implement the programme and deliver high-quality results.
Another 500-million-dollar loan for the EHSDP will support the government’s efforts to prioritise health service delivery in seven states – Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Meghalaya, Odisha, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, and Uttar Pradesh.
The support will strengthen service delivery through a redesigned primary healthcare model and improve quality of care, besides transforming health sector governance and accountability by strengthening implementation capacity, enhancing performance measurement and fostering learning and knowledge exchanges among states.
The two loans have a final maturity of 18.5 years including a grace period of five years.– NNN-PTI
