Zika-affected countries have requested
assistance from the World Bank to
respond to the outbreak and the global financial institution is in close
communication with the World Health
Organization, the Pan American
Health Organization and affected countries to determine what
its response will look like.
 |
A
worker for the health ministry fumigates a house in Guatemala to
combat
the Aedes mosquitoes, which are the transmitters of the Zika
virus.
What is the World Bank doing in response to the outbreak?
|
The
mosquito-borne virus is spreading rapidly across Latin America and the
Caribbean and is thought to be the causing microcephaly — a neurological
condition associated with small heads in newborn babies.
“We
have communicated with countries across the region that we are ready to help
them mount an effective response to the epidemic itself, further strengthen
their health systems and mitigate any potential economic impacts,” Anugraha
Palan, a World Bank spokeswoman, wrote in an email to Devex.
The
primary focus of a global response to the virus should be “to decimate the
vector — mosquitoes,” wrote Palan, adding, “This will require a hand-to-hand
combat approach, community by community, country by country.”
The
WHO declared Zika virus a global health emergency earlier this month.
The
Obama administration announced Monday that it will ask the U.S. Congress for
over $1.8 billion in emergency funding for Zika response and preparation, which
includes $335 million for the U.S. Agency
for International Development to support training of health
care workers, build education campaigns and develop a Global Health Security
Grand Challenge among other priorities.
The
World Bank has “a major role to play” in the Zika response according to
Lawrence Gostin, director of the O’Neil Institute for National and Global
Health Law at Georgetown University and director of the WHO Collaborating
Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights.
“The
bank’s main function would be to mobilize and disburse funding, while working
with WHO and other public health agencies to clearly set out the priority areas
for funding,” Gostin wrote to Devex in an email.
Priority
areas for Zika funding “should include aggressive mosquito control;
surveillance; and R&D for diagnostic tests, vaccines, [and] establishing
the link between Zika and microcephaly,” Gostin wrote, adding that World Bank
funds should be “conditioned on government’s agreeing to implement priority
measures, with clear benchmarks for implementation and full transparency and
accountability.”
While
the specifics of the World Bank’s response to Zika is still being determined,
the global financial institution is working with the WHO and other partners to
develop a Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility that
would provide quick funds to countries and health care responders in order to
help tackle future pathogen outbreaks such as the Ebola crisis — which for
months affected West Africa.
The
PEF is not yet operational and it is unclear whether Zika will fit the category
of pathogens that the PEF will be designed to address, but the World Bank does
have “a range of financing tools available to support countries in the Zika
response right now,” wrote Palan.
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