The catastrophic costs of pandemics and zoonotic outbreaks with pandemic potential have a long and notorious history in human civilization, and presage an increasingly alarming future prognosis.
... See More + Highly virulent infectious diseases, such as the plague, cholera, and influenza, have repeatedly swept through human societies, causing death, economic chaos, and political and social disorder. As the threat of pandemics grows in a globalized world where viruses move and mutate faster than ever before, so does the case for increasing the world's resilience and capacity to prepare, detect and respond to epidemic threats. Vaccines are a critical component of that response. However, the vaccine pipeline is weak for most epidemic threats, and there is an urgent and pressing need for a system that will advance vaccine candidates as far as possible before epidemics emerge, and then run efficacy trials immediately when they do. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) was created to address the financing gap for development of vaccines for Epidemic Infectious Diseases (EIDs). The mission of CEPI is fully aligned with the Bank's twin goals of ending poverty and promoting shared prosperity. By partnering with CEPI, the Bank will twin the financing for development of vaccines with several ongoing initiatives to potentially leverage vaccine development and deployment to higher levels of effectiveness and impact. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section II provides the strategic context and rationale for the Bank's engagement as Trustee. Section III presents the proposed Trustee engagement. Section IV outlines risks identified along with mitigation measures. Section V includes the proposed recommendation.
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Deadly infectious pandemics will mark humanity's future, as they have shaped its past. Neither individual governments nor the global community can entirely prevent the emergence of infectious threats.
... See More + But we can be much better prepared. This report by the International Working Group on Financing Preparedness (IWG) proposes ways in which national governments and development partners can finance investments in country and regional preparedness and response capacities for pandemics and other health emergencies. Preparedness for pandemics refers to health and non-health interventions, capabilities, and capacities at community, country, regional, and global levels. Their purpose is to prevent, detect, contain and respond to the spread of disease and other hazards, mitigating social disruptions and limiting risks to international travel and trade.
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What is commonly called the tourism sector is in fact part of the wholesale and retail trade or commerce sector under the System of National Accounts.
... See More + However, due to the growing importance of tourism activities, especially for some countries where tourism is a significant contributor to gross domestic product, efforts have been made in recent times to measure their value under a separate satellite account. The tourism sector is highly vulnerable to the effects and impacts of disasters of every kind. This is due to three main reasons: first, the frequent or usual location of tourism assets in vulnerable coastal areas; second, the volatility of tourism demand due to fear or misinformation about the possible consequences of disasters; and third, in view of the seasonality of the high-demand tourism season, a disaster may mean an entire season’s worth of lost income. This paper describes the procedure to assess the effects of a disaster on the tourism sector, using the time-proven methodology originally developed by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UNECLAC) (Handbook for estimating the socio-economic and environmental impact of disasters, 4 volumes, United Nations, 2003), further developed by the World Bank´s Global Facility for Disaster Recovery and Reduction (GFDRR) (Guidance Notes for Damage, Loss and Needs Assessment, 3 volumes, The World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2010), and now expanded and adopted by the Post-disaster needs assessment (PDNA). Application of the methodology enables the assessment of disasters’ economic and social impact on the tourism sector, and the estimation of post-disaster needs for recovery and reconstruction.
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Last April’s East Asia update noted the threat to regional and global public health from outbreaks of avian influenza A (H5N1) in East Asia. Since then outbreaks among wild birds and poultry have spread to Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Romania and Croatia, while, in East Asia, new outbreaks this year have occurred in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Lao People's Democratic Republic (PDR), Thailand, and Vietnam.
... See More + While the bulk of human cases so far are thought to be the result of transmission of the virus from animals to humans, there is great concern that genetic changes will allow the H5N1 virus to achieve the capacity for efficient and sustained transmission among humans, leading to a human influenza pandemic, with high levels of illness, death and other human, economic, and social costs in East Asia and around the world. As a result the question of how to prevent or prepare for such a pandemic is quickly vaulting to a top priority for governments around the world. Since a human influenza pandemic will rapidly spread all over the world, stopping or controlling avian flu is therefore a true global public good, which all countries have an interest in acquiring. Thus, while country level leadership and engagement is essential for success, it must be backed by global resources.
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The development objectives of the Regional Disease Surveillance Systems Enhancement (REDISSE) Project are: (i) to strengthen national and regional cross-sectoral capacity for collaborative disease surveillance and epidemic preparedness in West Africa; and (ii) in the event of an eligible crisis or emergency, to provide immediate and effective response to said eligible crisis or emergency.
... See More + The project has five components as follows: 1) The first component, Surveillance and Information Systems, will support the enhancement of national surveillance and reporting systems and their interoperability at the different tiers of the health systems. It has three sub components as follows: (i) Support coordinated community-level surveillance systems and processes across the animal and human health sectors; (ii) Develop capacity for interoperable surveillance and reporting systems; and (iii) Establish an early warning system for infectious disease trends prediction. 2) The second component, Strengthening of Laboratory Capacity, aims to establish networks of efficient, high quality, accessible public health, veterinary and private laboratories for the diagnosis of infectious human and animal diseases, and to establish a regional networking platform to improve collaboration for laboratory investigation. It has three sub components as follows: (i) Review, upgrade and support network laboratory facilities; (ii) Improve data management and specimen management; and (iii) Enhance regional reference laboratory networking functions. The third component, Preparedness and Emergency Response, will support national and regional efforts to enhance infectious disease outbreak preparedness and response capacity. It has three sub components as follows: (i) Enhance cross-sectoral coordination and collaboration for preparedness and response; (ii) Strengthen Capacity for emergency response; and (iii) Contingent Emergency Response. 4) The fourth component, Human Resource Management for Effective Disease Surveillance and Epidemic Preparedness, aims at bringing the right people with the right skills to the right place at the right time. It has two sub components as follows: (i) Health workforce mapping, planning and recruitment; and (ii) Enhance health workforce training, motivation and retention. 5) The fifth component, Institutional Capacity Building, Project Management, Coordination, and Advocacy, focuses on all aspects related to project management, coordination by West Africa Health Organization (WAHO) as well as support to enhancing the capacity of the Recovery Health Access Center (RHAC) to coordinate the implementation of animal health interventions. It has two sub components as follows: (i) Project coordination, fiduciary management, monitoring and evaluation, data generation, and knowledge management; and (ii) Institutional support, capacity building, advocacy, and communication.
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One of the sobering lessons of the recent Ebola crisis in West Africa was how ill prepared the world was for such a deadly disease. Pandemics pose a serious threat to both global health and economic security, as well as to the ability to end extreme poverty and achieve the sustainable development goals.
... See More + The pandemic emergency financing facility (PEF) is designed to help fill a critical gap in the international aid architecture, as one part of the global solution to strengthen pandemic risk management. The PEF will help fill the financing gap that occurs after the initial outbreak occurs and before large-scale humanitarian relief assistance can be mobilized. Over the longer term, it is expected that the PEF will play a key role in developing a market for pandemic risk insurance - a novel risk area. The paper is organized as follows: section one gives introduction. Section two provides the background and context for the PEF, outlining the importance of preparedness and response. Section three focuses on the design of the PEF. Section four outlines the governance and operationalization of the PEF. Section five contains issues related to risks and risk mitigation. The paper concludes in section six.
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In the past decade, Latin America and the Caribbean has achieved impressive social and economic successes. For the first time in history, more people are in the middle class than in poverty.
... See More + Inequality, although still high, declined markedly. Growth, jobs and effective social programs have transformed the lives of millions. In a striking departure from the crisis-prone Latin America of the past, the region has shown it is better prepared to weather the brunt of the global economic slowdown. Now, the region faces the challenge of maintaining and expanding its hard won gains in an adverse context of low growth. This is caused in part by a decrease in commodity prices and reduced economic activity in major commercial partners such as China. In such a scenario, achieving development results - and learning from them - becomes more important. This publication showcases stories about people and how their lives have been improved through better health and education, youth employment, disaster recovery and preparedness, infrastructure, and more.
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Working Paper (Numbered Series) 95970 APR 01, 2015
The Global Program for Avian Influenza Control and Human Pandemic Preparedness and Response for Vietnam received a highly satisfactory outcome with moderate risk to development outcome.
... See More + Both the Bank and the Borrower received a satisfactory performance rating. Components were not revised during the project life, and there were no other significant changes in design, scope and scale, and implementation arrangements. The following lessons can help inform future programs that build veterinary and human public health systems for prevention and control of diseases: (1) An emergency is an opportunity to reduce risks over the medium term. This will help prevent future costly emergencies. (2) One Health approaches are effective in disease control and prevention. (3) One Health approaches are feasible when there is good leadership. (4) Behavior change takes time and resources. (5) Upstream attention to environmental impacts helps prevent problems. (6) Transition from emergency response to systemic improvements is important. (7) Successful market upgrades. (8) M&E indicators. Final outcome indicators (such as disease prevalence and the case fatality ratio) are by themselves not sufficient to evaluate progress and thus may be misleading. They need to be complemented by measures of system performance for functions that are required for disease control and prevention. (9) Technical definitions are critical for M&E. (10) Use of consultants. External expertise was essential for the highly technical task of improving laboratories and their management. (11) Decentralized implementation. This was both necessary (because disease control and prevention activities occur in numerous districts and villages) and challenging (because local capacity was uneven and alignment with national policies and programs was required). (12) Engaging stakeholders beyond Ministry of Health (MOH) and Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD). (13) Training health workers on communications, especially risk communications. This helped extend messages to communities and improved infection control in health care facilities. (14) Rule to balance expenditures on training and equipment in health care centers. (15) Quality of supervision and implementation support. Substantial implementation support was instrumental to the success of this technically complex, emergency, and multisectoral operation.
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Implementation Completion and Results Report ICR3330 DEC 23, 2014
This report discusses the remarks delivered by Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank. He discusses on the need for Liberia to be in a position that's better than it was in before the outbreak of the Ebola virus.
... See More + He talks about the need to really focus on getting the health care system in place so that these kinds of problems don't happen again, and to get the private sector moving. He atlks about the need to build surveillance and protection systems, and functioning public health systems. He concludes by saying that if we can bring modern medicine to bear, even in the rural villages and detect the cases through the contact tracing, we can get to zero, but it will take a huge effort and it will take a bit of a shift in strategy to focus more on communities and buildings.
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