This is a statement by Honourable Joe Oliver, Minister of Finance at the eighty-ninth meeting of the Development Committee held on April 12, 2014.
... See More + The World Bank Group has an instrumental role to play in helping developing countries manage the post-crisis transition and in maintaining the recent momentum in poverty reduction. Over the last year, it has undertaken a number of internal reforms to better position itself to respond to the evolving and uncertain external environment. He states to support the Bank in five key areas: maternal and child health; long-term financing for infrastructure and private sector for development; agriculture and nutrition; meeting the needs of small states; and strengthening the Bank's financial capacity.
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This is a statement by Mr. Anthony Lake, Executive Director at the eighty-ninth meeting of the Development Committee held on April 12, 2014. Five years after the global financial crisis, the economic outlook is brightening: growth is picking up in both developing countries and high-income economies.
... See More + But inequalities and poverty persist in all countries. Over a billion people continue to live on less than $1.25 a day. Inequalities within and between countries are growing, thereby threatening economic development and poverty reduction efforts. Children are among the most vulnerable to the effects of poverty and inequalities. Investing in them in particular in the most vulnerable is a strategic way to build a brighter future for all, and for generations to come.
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Ratings for the Community Nutrition Project for Lao People's Democratic Republic were as follows: outcomes were satisfactory, risk to development outcome was moderate, Bank performance was moderately satisfactory, and Borrower performance was moderately satisfactory.
... See More + Some lessons learned included: conditional cash transfer (CCT) and community based nutrition (CBN) messaging delivered by trained local volunteers can effectively improve utilization of key maternal and child health (MCH) services and improve critical nutrition behaviors, especially among poor households, living in remote areas. A combination of community-based approach and free health service provision, with incentives to offset opportunity and transport costs (a major barrier for poor vulnerable households to accessing health services) is an effective way to increase utilization of MCH and nutrition services. The CBN model is a flexible one that provides opportunity to incrementally add interventions. For cash payments against CCT, it is more efficient to use a third party arrangement rather than the use of health center (HC) staff. Funds flow arrangements must be well defined and standards must be set and enforced for the number of days within which transfer of funds (to the next level or to another entity at a parallel level) must occur. Training must be offered on a regular basis in the case of village facilitators (VFs) who are not highly educated and have little or no skills to deliver health and nutrition messages. With careful implementation support and technical assistance (TA), it is possible to building institutional capacity even in weak capacity settings. The project further reinforces that effective project management requires proactivity, including undertaking necessary restructuring to respond to on-ground realities and align project activities, timelines, resources to address implementation, and other challenges.
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Implementation Completion and Results Report ICR2725 MAR 26, 2014
The report consists of the following seven chapters. The present chapter provides the context and the rationale for the study, and outlines the methodology.
... See More + Chapter two describes the nutrition system in detail and discusses the capacity issues related to the division of labor (DoL) between the two primary programs of the nutrition system and within the Integrated Child Development Services, or ICDS. Chapter three delves into the factors that constrain leadership capacity at all levels chapter four discusses the key capacity constraints related to HR that limit the effective delivery of nutrition services. Chapter five discusses the training system as a sub-system of HR and its capacity constraints, and Chapter six covers the capacity assessment pertaining to monitoring, evaluation and management of information in the nutrition system. Chapter seven discusses the capacity constraints related to General Management Practices, or GMPs in the ICDS, especially focusing on supervision, accountability and work practices and procedures.
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Working Paper ACS8021 MAR 01, 2014
Kathuria, Ashi Kohli; Orbach, Eliezer; Anand, Deepika
In Lao People's Democratic Republic (PDR), 11 percent of deaths of children under 5 are due to diarrhea. Undernourished children have an increased risk of falling sick and greater severity of disease.
... See More + Undernourished children who fall sick are much more likely to die from illness than well-nourished children. Parasitic infestation diverts nutrients from the body and can cause blood loss and anemia. During the important transition period to a mix of mix of breast milk and solid food between six and nine months of age, nearly half (48 percent) of infants are not fed appropriately with both breast milk and other foods. The World Bank is supporting both nutrition sensitive and nutrition-specific interventions involving multiple sectors. At the policy-level, the World Bank recently collaborated with Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on the rice policy study (2012) and is financing a knowledge exchange activity between Lao PDR and Indonesia to facilitate high-level interactions among policymakers to improve the effectiveness of and to scale-up nutrition interventions.
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Ratings for the Nutrition and Malaria Control for Child Survival Project for Ghana were as follows: outcomes were moderately satisfactory, the risk to development outcome was moderate, the Bank performance was moderately satisfactory, and the Borrower performance was also moderately satisfactory.
... See More + One of the lessons learned under this project is the need to effectively utilize limited funding of inputs and incentives for volunteers to deliver community-based services given the overall high cost of providing incentives to such a large cadre of people. While as the financial inputs on their own were found to be insufficient by most volunteers, examples of more effective use of these funds and other incentives was seen across districts and communities such as the enrollment of volunteers into the National Health Insurance Schemes, the exemption from communal activities and levies and priority treatment at health facilities. The initial implementation arrangements for the project constrained its progress. The restructuring greatly improved the management arrangements and helped move the project forward. Because of the implementation constraints, the task team moved the anticipated date for the mid-term review forward in order to get to the restructuring earlier. Proactive supervision clearly led to improved project performance. In hindsight, this restructuring could even have been done earlier. It should be mentioned that while the addition of a sub-metro areas of Accra and Kumasi in the Great Accra and Ashanti regions to the project was done especially to draw on lessons learned based on implementation in urban settings, late implementation of community-based health and nutrition services in these areas means that such lessons have still not been identified at this time.
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Implementation Completion and Results Report ICR2710 JAN 27, 2014
In Lao People's Democratic Republic (PDR), 11 percent of deaths of children under 5 are due to diarrhea. Undernourished children have an increased risk of falling sick and greater severity of disease.
... See More + Undernourished children who fall sick are much more likely to die from illness than well-nourished children. Parasitic infestation diverts nutrients from the body and can cause blood loss and anemia. During the important transition period to a mix of mix of breast milk and solid food between six and nine months of age, nearly half (48 percent) of infants are not fed appropriately with both breast milk and other foods. The World Bank is supporting both nutrition sensitive and nutrition-specific interventions involving multiple sectors. At the policy-level, the World Bank recently collaborated with Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on the rice policy study (2012) and is financing a knowledge exchange activity between Lao PDR and Indonesia to facilitate high-level interactions among policymakers to improve the effectiveness of and to scale-up nutrition interventions.
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This paper estimates two sources of benefits related to sanitation infrastructure access on early childhood health: a direct benefit a household receives when moving from open to fixed-point defecation or from unimproved sanitation to improved sanitation, and an external benefit (externality) produced by the neighborhood's access to sanitation infrastructure.
... See More + The paper uses a sample of children under 48 months in rural areas of India from the Third Round of District Level Household Survey 2007-08 and finds evidence of positive and significant direct benefits and concave positive external effects for both improved sanitation and fixed-point defecation. There is a 47 percent reduction in diarrhea prevalence between children living in a household without access to improved sanitation in a village without coverage of improved sanitation and children living in a household with access to improved sanitation in a village with complete coverage. One-fourth of this benefit is due to the direct benefit leaving the rest to external gains. Finally, all the benefits from eliminating open defecation come from improved sanitation and not other sanitation solutions.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6737 JAN 01, 2014
Andres, Luis A.; Briceno, Bertha; Chase, Claire; Echenique, Juan A.
The CPF consultation meetings with the Government of Punjab and other stakeholders were held on September 11-12, 2013, in Lahore. The objective was to exchange views on the challenges and development priorities for the province for WBG support under its new five-year strategy.
... See More + The WBG team met with key Secretaries of the Government of Punjab led by the Additional Chief Secretary, the parliamentarians and political leaders from Punjab's mainstream political parties; representatives of civil society, non-governmental organizations, academia, think tanks and the private sector. Please see Annex I for list of participants in the consultations sessions. The priority setting process for the Country Partnership Framework starts with preparing a Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD), an assessment of challenges and opportunities, and disseminating it early in the process of consultations. Based on the emerging themes or priorities, the areas of focus are identified and are clearly linked with the outcomes. The implementation plan is prepared separately providing details of interventions and programs to achieve the intended outcomes. The initial diagnostic suggests that there are both challenges and opportunities for Pakistan that together with the key global trends, are influencing and shaping up the development landscape of the country. And if addressed in a systematic way, it can unlock the great potential for economic revival and growth and can create a path to growth and poverty reduction that is inclusive, equitable and sustainable in terms of employment generation, livelihoods and human opportunity for all.
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The objective of the National Vector Borne Disease Control and Polio Eradication Support Project for India is to enhance the effectiveness of government response to control malaria, eliminate kala azar and eradicate polio.
... See More + This will be achieved by an increase in the number of people benefiting from effective prevention, diagnosis and treatment services for malaria and kala azar, and vaccination against polio. This paper pertains to a full restructuring of the project, including a restructuring of the project development objective, changes and reallocations in the financing plan, and changes in the project components and costs. The restructuring is primarily due to constraints in procurement, which led to a major shortfall in expenditure and consequently affected project implementation.
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The development objective of the Multisectoral Food Health Nutrition Project for Benin is to increase the coverage and utilization of community-based child growth and nutrition interventions in selected areas in the Recipient's territory.
... See More + The project has two components. The first component is policy and program development, management, and coordination. This component will support the Recipient to: (i) strengthen coordination and monitoring capacity at the commune level by establishing communal consultative groups in order to develop a common result framework for improved service delivery for child nutrition; (ii) develop a multisectoral policy, coordination, and oversight mechanisms at the central level (among Food and Nutrition Council (CAN), line ministries, other public institutions, and development partners) and at the decentralized level (among the communal councils and their stakeholders); and (iii) strengthen sectoral programs, inter alia in agriculture, health and social affairs, at the central level for improved nutrition. The second component is community mobilization and services delivery strengthening. This component will support the Recipient to: (i) improve public service delivery in the food, health, and nutrition sectors by the members of the communal consultative groups; and (ii) carry out communal subprojects for, inter alia, social and behavior change, communication, and community mobilization.
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Open defecation within a community harms the physical and cognitive development of children, even children living in households that use toilets themselves.
... See More + Frequently digesting feces due to poor sanitation can cause diarrhea, malnutrition, and stunted growth-and thus impact negatively on a child's cognitive development. Experiencing these health hazards at young ages can ultimately limit one's earning potential later in life. In addition to the use of health services, mother and child nutrition practices and care, the immediate disease environment shapes early life health and ultimately a child's achievement later in life. Thus, elimination of open defecation makes a sensible priority for policy makers that are concerned with the next productive generation. This brief shows, the level of open defecation in a community is associated with shorter children in Cambodia. Moreover, the level of open defecation in a community is more important for a child's development than whether the child's household itself openly defecates. By looking at the change in defecation levels and average child height between 2005 and 2010 within Cambodian provinces, the study is able to show that improvements in sanitation access played a substantial role in increasing average child height over the same five years.
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The objective of this review was to study where community-based family planning and nutrition programs have been integrated, how this has been accomplished, and what the results have been.
... See More + Although family planning is a nontraditional intervention in community-based nutrition programs, it can have profound effects on maternal and child health and nutrition. When family planning does not occur, short intervals between pregnancies deplete mothers' reserves of nutrients needed for pregnancy and later for breastfeeding. As a result, short birth intervals are associated with higher maternal and neonatal mortality and malnutrition rates of infants. Family planning, which promotes contraceptive use and the lactational amenorrhea method, can thus improve nutrition outcomes in both mothers and babies. The authors identified a few studies on integrated services in the published literature; thus the main part of the review is built on operational research studies and unpublished smaller scale intervention studies. However, the controlled studies that were identified indicate positive correlation between breastfeeding levels and increased contraception use. Additionally, although the design of the intervention studies did not make it possible to assess the degree to which integration had an impact, the studies did highlight factors that were key to a successful integration process. These are community engagement; multiple and frequent contact points between mothers, community volunteers, and health workers; involvement of husbands; moving implementation decisions closer to the users of the program; and assuring transparency, clarity, and simplicity in the transmission of development objectives to communities.
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