The World Bank Group has designed a fast-disbursing global financing mechanism to protect countries against deadly pandemics. The mechanism, called the Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility, will be operational later this year.
The facility was built with the World Health Organization and various private-sector parties with the aim of shortening global and national response time to outbreaks that have the potential to become pandemic.
"Pandemics pose some of the biggest threats in the world to people's lives and to economies, and for the first time we will have a system that can move funding and teams of experts to the sites of outbreaks before they spin out of control," said World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim. "This facility addresses a long, collective failure in dealing with pandemics. The Ebola crisis in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone taught all of us that we must be much more vigilant to outbreaks and respond immediately to save lives and also to protect economic growth."
To accelerate response time, the PEF has an insurance window that will release funds in a timely manner to countries and qualified international responding agencies facing an infectious disease outbreak. The facility also has a complementary cash window for more flexible funding.
Seventy-seven countries that already receive financing from the International Development Association — the World Bank Group's fund for the poorest countries — will be eligible to receive coverage from the PEF as well.
"Recent years have seen a dramatic resurgence of the threat from emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases," said WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, MD. "WHO fully supports the Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility as a critical contribution to global health security and a crucial line of defense against high-threat pathogens."
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