Health

The World Bank is committed to helping developing countries achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC) through stronger, more resilient health systems and providing quality, affordable health services to everyone – especially the most vulnerable. But progress towards achieving UHC remain far off track.

Climate change, pandemics, demographic changes and a dramatic shortage of health care workers around the world are straining health systems and worsening health outcomes.  Aging populations worldwide is fueling a surge of non-communicable diseases and health care costs.The latest World Bank/World Health Organization research revealed an alarming stagnation in the progress towards providing people everywhere with quality, affordable, and accessible healthcare. Over half the world's population--4.5 billion people -- lack access to essential health services and two billion people face severe financial hardship when paying out-of-pocket for the services and products they need.

But despite compelling evidence that investing in health is critical for productivity and inclusive growth, government allocate less money to health than they did before the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The World Bank Group is committed to helping countries deliver quality, affordable health services to 1.5 billion people by 2030 as part of our global effort to provide a basic standard of care through every stage of a person’s life.

Our $30 billion global health portfolio includes over 170 projects that are helping countries improve health outcomes by strengthening primary care and public health functions and utilizing digital solutions.

Ensuring that every woman and child has access to health care is also fundamental to ending poverty, building robust economies, and achieving UHC.

The Global Financing Facility for Women, Children and Adolescents (GFF), a multi-stakeholder partnership hosted at the World Bank has been supporting countries with the world’s highest maternal and child mortality burden and financial needs. Since the GFF was founded in 2015, partner countries have made significant progress to improve maternal and child health.

The Investment Framework for Nutrition 2024, shows that investments to scale up high-impact nutrition interventions could save the lives of 6.2 million children under age five and prevent 980,000 stillbirths over the next decade. Such programs would also avert 27 million cases of child stunting and 144 million cases of maternal anemia. Both undernutrition and obesity are obstacles to human capital, economic productivity, and an equitable, prosperous world. The economic benefits of nutrition interventions far outweigh the costs of inaction.

Investing in healthy longevity

Compounding these challenges is the rapid aging of populations worldwide, fueling a surge of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and health care costs around the world.

NCDs are the cause of 70 percent of deaths globally, with most of these deaths occurring in low- and middle-income countries. Despite advances in reducing communicable diseases, rates remain high in many parts of the world for malnutrition, unmet need for sexual and reproductive health services, and maternal mortality.

But there is an opportunity to leverage population aging for health, societal, and economic gains by investing today in health and wellbeing across peoples’ lives. This includes measures to control NCDs and their risk factors which contribute to a large and growing burden of avoidable mortality. Our recent report shows that investing in healthy longevity could save 150 million lives in low- and middle- income countries and extend millions more by 2050, generating significant economic benefit.

Supporting strong resilient health systems

Strong health systems are key to providing health services to everyone who needs it, especially the poorest and most vulnerable people. A  World Bank report charts an agenda toward reimagined, fit-for-purpose primary health care. It reflects a renewed understanding of global and local vulnerabilities and opportunities in the post-COVID world. Another report Change Cannot Wait: Building Resilient Health Systems in the Shadow of COVID-19 builds on this analysis and presents a new framework for making health systems resilient and where countries and partners can best target investments to improve health outcomes.

Last Updated: Oct 10, 2024

The World Bank is committed to helping developing countries achieve universal health coverage through stronger, more resilient health systems and provide quality, affordable health services to everyone – especially to the most vulnerable people during a time of crisis. We also support countries in their efforts to prevent pandemics by strengthening veterinary and human health systems, as well as the bridges between them in a One Health approach.

A focused effort to become faster, work better with partners, and bring in the private sector is at the heart of our strategy to pursue greater scale and impact and to reach 1.5 billion people with quality health services by 2030. The strategy is focused on three core elements:

• Expanding focus from maternal and child health to include coverage throughout a person’s lifetime, including non-communicable diseases.
• Expanding operations to hard-to-reach areas, including remote villages, cities, and countries.
• Working with governments to cut unnecessary fees and other financial barriers to health care.

The ambitious agenda and future directions for the World Bank to support pandemic prevention, preparedness and response (PPR) at country, regional, and global levels as part of a broader approach to strengthen health systems, aims to strengthen PPR through actions in three interconnected domains: financing; global engagements and partnerships; and analytics, evidence, and dialogue.

The World Bank is working closely with donors, development partners, governments, and the private sector on several key focus areas including, ending preventable maternal and child mortality; reducing stunting and improving nutrition for infants and children; strengthening health systems and health financing; and ensuring pandemic preparedness and response.

Last Updated: Oct 10, 2024

Strengthening health systems and pandemic preparedness

Pandemics pose a serious threat not only to global health security and to achieving UHC, but also to economic security. While deadly disease outbreaks are inevitable, strong health systems help countries to better detect and respond to diseases and prevent an outbreak from becoming a pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has inflicted devastating health and economic costs, but also created a once-in-a-generation chance for transformational health system changes. The World Bank is committed to helping developing countries achieve universal health coverage through stronger, more resilient health systems and provide quality, affordable health services to everyone – especially to the most vulnerable people. 

The World Bank is the largest single funder of the global COVID-19 health response with $14.3 billion committed to over 100 countries, including in  32 countries impacted by fragility, conflict and violence.  Through this financing, the Bank is assisting governments strengthen health systems, disease surveillance, and public health interventions, and work with the private sector to reduce the impact on economies. See more information here. 

Health Financing

World Bank research shows that following global economic shocks from the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the spending capacity of governments will decline or stagnate in many low- and lower middle-income countries. Without bold choices, these countries will be unable to make the necessary investment to strengthen public health preparedness and make progress toward universal health coverage.

In 41 countries, government spending until 2027 is projected to remain lower than before COVID-19, restricting their ability to invest in critical areas, including health.  In addition, rising interest payments on public debt further threaten the capacity of many countries to invest in health.

Without immediate action, many low- and lower middle-income countries will be left behind on the path to health and economic recovery leading to growing inequalities between countries, threatening global stability, and prosperity.

Climate change and Health

Unabated climate change is also expected to make the global goal of poverty reduction even more challenging to reach. A recent World Bank study estimates that climate change may push an additional 132 million people (more than half of whom live in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia), into extreme poverty by 2030, with 44 million of these driven by health impacts.

As the largest climate financier, and the biggest funder of health systems, the World Bank is committed to increasing its investments in climate-health action. Through its Climate and Health Program, it is integrating climate considerations through its $34 billion health portfolio which is already active in over 100 countries.

The World Bank has already made significant climate-related health investments across more than 100 countries – with 80 percent of its investments allocated to adaptation interventions such as urgent nutrition support, surveillance systems, and emergency response centers.

Nutrition

Nutrition interventions are consistently identified as one of the most cost-effective development actions. However, an estimated 149 million children under 5 are stunted (low height for age), which compromises not only child’s health and survival but also brain development, learning, and adult earnings, leading to long-term impacts on countries’ human capital formation.  Over 70% of countries—the vast majority of which are low- and lower-middle-income countries—currently face a double burden of malnutrition: a high prevalence of both undernutrition and obesity.

Last Updated: Oct 04, 2023

Improving health outcomes is a key focus at the World Bank Group. Together with partners, the WBG has provided health services to 750 million people over the last five years. This is the result of the World Bank’s strong focus on preserving and strengthening primary health care systems to cope with health emergencies, and providing services for the most vulnerable, crisis-hit, and hardest-to-reach populations. 

Under the IDA19 cycle (July 2020 – June 2022), $76.7 billion were committed in just two years, reaching 213 million people with essential health, nutrition, and population services, including 82 million people in fragile and conflict affected situations. This included 78 million children who received immunizations, 114 million women and children accessing nutrition services, and 21 million deliveries with skilled personnel. These results were achieved despite the COVID-19 pandemic, unfolding conflicts, and increasing impacts from climate change. 

The World Bank has also been the single largest funder of the global COVID-19 health response with $14.3 billion committed to nearly 100 countries, including 32 countries impacted by fragility, conflict and violence. This includes more than $10 billion for COVID-19 vaccine projects.

Honduras: The $75 million Restoring Essential Services for Health and Advancing Preparedness for Emergencies (RESHAPE) Project ($60 million IDA and $15 million from the GFF), helps improving the country’s reproductive and child health services. It also strengthens public health capacities for emergency preparedness to ensure prompt and effective response in case of a crisis or an emergency for all Honduran residents. The project will directly benefit an estimated 3 million women of childbearing age, 640,000 children under five years and 600,000 adolescents aged 15-19 years with improved health services. 

Lao PDR: The $41.4 million IDA-financed Lao PDR Health Governance and Nutrition Development Project helped increase coverage of reproductive, maternal and child health, and nutrition services in selected regions. The project tackled the problem of inequity by boosting vaccination rates in 50 remote districts that have historically been lagging behind the rest of the country. As a result, these districts saw an increase of 22% of measles vaccinations and a 30% increase of DTP and hepatitis B vaccinations. Read more here

Nigeria: The $650 million IDA-financed Nigeria Improved Child Survival Program for Human Capital (IMPACT) is a 10-year engagement, spanning from 2020 to 2030 to improve and increase immunization and malaria services in selected states. By September 2022, the project had already surpassed its two-year targets, despite the disruption of services as a result of COVID-19. For example, the percentage of children (12-23 months old) vaccinated fully vaccinated against DPT and hepatitis B increased from 49% in June 2020 to 57% in August 2022. Similarly, the percentage of children under age 5 who slept under insecticide nets increased from 28% to 41% over the same period. The second phase of the project will begin in 2025 and will support the country’s new primary health care financing reform.

Yemen: The $300 million IDA-financed Emergency Human Capital Project builds on previous projects and helps strengthen decentralized systems for better service delivery and improving public health, water and sanitation functions, including surveillance and water quality. The project partners with UNICEF, UNOPS, and WHO to deliver these services.  

Between October 2021 and June 2022, about 2.8 million people received essential health, nutrition, and population services through the project’s support. Approximately, 1.5 million women and 1.7 million children under five years old received life-saving services, such as antenatal care, safe birth delivery, immunization, and preventive and curative nutrition services. Over 400,000 people received access to improved water and sanitation services.

Last Updated: Oct 10, 2024