Climate change is a major risk to good development outcomes, and the World Bank Group is committed to playing an important role in helping countries integrate climate action into their core development agendas. The World Bank Group is committed to supporting client countries to invest in and build a... low-carbon, climate-resilient future, helping them to be better prepared to adapt to current and future climate impacts
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This profile is part of a series of Climate Risk Country Profiles developed by the World Bank Group (WBG). The country profile
synthesizes most relevant data and information on climate change, disaster risk reduction, and adaptation actions and policies
at the country level. The country profile se...ries are designed as a quick reference source for development practitioners to better
integrate climate resilience in development planning and policy making.
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This booklet presents key messages for action, summarized from a set of
chapters on different environmental health issues.
New data from the WHO reveal that an estimated 2.2 billion cases of malaria and 12.7 million deaths have been averted since 2000, but the disease remains a serious global health threat, particularly in the WHO African Region. According to WHO’s latest World malaria report, there were an estimated ...263 million cases and 597 000 malaria deaths worldwide in 2023. This represents about 11 million more cases in 2023 compared to 2022, and nearly the same number of deaths. Approximately 95% of the deaths occurred in the WHO African Region, where many at risk still lack access to the services they need to prevent, detect and treat the disease.
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In contrast to bilateral aid, aid disbursed from
multilateral institutions increased significantly at the onset
of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, at a time when a coherent
and effective multilateral response is needed most, the
COVID-19 pandemic revealed a shifting landscape of donor
agencies that... struggle with basic functions, such as crossnational coordination. While multilaterals are uniquely
positioned to transcend national priorities and respond
to pandemics, functionally we find official development
assistance (ODA) from these entities may increasingly
mimic the attributes of bilateral aid. We explore three
important, but not comprehensive, attributes of aid leading
up to and during the COVID-19 pandemic: (1) earmarking,
(2) donor concentration and (3) aid modality.
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IHME’s Financing Global Health report provides an overview of health spending around the world, with a special focus on investments in health in low- and middle-income countries. The report examines how this funding for health is changing each year and forecasts how it may change in the future. Fi...nancing Global Health examines where money for health originates and what health issues it funds.
This year, Financing Global Health 2023 looks at how interest payments on loans that many countries took out during the COVID-19 pandemic to keep their economies afloat and their people protected are now straining health budgets. It also details how development partners’ investments in health in low- and middle-income countries – development assistance for health – have changed since reaching historic levels during the COVID-19 pandemic, dropping by $19.4 billion between 2021 and 2023, from $84.0 billion to $64.6 billion.
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Rising levels of inflation, debt and macrofiscal tightening are putting expenditures on the social sectors including health under immense scrutiny. Already, there are worrying signs of reductions in social sector investments. However, even before the pandemic, evidence showed the significant returns... on investments in health equity and its social determinants. Emerging data and trends show that these potential returns have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic - investments in social determinants can mitigate widespread reductions in human capital and the increasing likelihood of costly syndemics, while promoting access to healthcare innovations that have thus far been inequitably distributed. Therefore, we argue that, despite immediate fiscal pressures, this is exactly the time to invest in health equity and its broader social determinants, as the returns on such investments have never been greater.
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Zambia is facing a severe economic crisis marked by high inflation, increasing poverty and a heavy debt burden that is straining both its fiscal stability and progress in health outcomes. By 2020, the country's external debt reached United States dollars (USD) 12.7 billion, representing 108% of the ...country's gross domestic product (GDP). In 2020, Zambia sought assistance through the G20 Common Framework and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Extended Credit Facility (ECF), securing a USD 1.7 billion loan over 5 years. IMF loans, however, come with austerity measures that prioritise fiscal discipline but could potentially exacerbate social inequalities. These measures, which include increasing consumer taxes on goods and services (value added taxes - VATs), electricity tariffs and fuel prices, disproportionately impact vulnerable populations, raising concerns about their long-term effects on essential services, especially accessible and good quality healthcare services.
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The COVID-19 pandemic exposed critical gaps in the global response to health crises, particularly in the financing of pandemic prevention, preparedness, response, recovery, and reconstruction. This chapter presents a comprehensive framework for pandemic financing that spans the entire pandemic cycle..., emphasizing the need for timely, adequate, and effective financial resources. The framework is designed to support
policymakers in both low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and high-income nations, providing a guide to appropriate financing tools for each stage of a pandemic, from prevention and preparedness to response and recovery. Key economic concepts such as global public goods, time preference, and incentives are explored to underscore the complexities of pandemic financing.
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Nearly 800 women die every day from preventable maternal causes, and in 2022 alone, an estimated 2.3 million newborns died. For every maternal death, countless more women endure life-altering injuries, infections, and disabilities related to childbirth.
Maternal deaths are concentrated in the poo...rest regions and conflict-affected areas. In 2020, sub-Saharan Africa accounted for nearly 70% of all maternal deaths, with just 22 countries responsible for 81% of the global total. Humanitarian crises and fragile health systems exacerbate these challenges, with maternal mortality rates in crisis-affected areas often double the global average. The barriers to progress are multifaceted, including inadequate funding, poor-quality healthcare, harmful gender and social norms, and critical gaps in data and accountability.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated and added yet another layer of vulnerability to an already dire web of vulnerabilities of girls in the African continent, which constitute about 49% of the total child population. Critically, gender equality and girls’ multidimensional vulnerability have been ...accentuated to an unprecedented level. The pandemic has triggered major concerns about the potential reversal of the strides achieved over the years towards gender equality and human development in Africa.
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The steps reassert the sequence of the HPC, with needs analysis directly informing decisions about the response and monitoring, whether for the preparation of new plans or adjustments to existing ones. The steps of the HPC have a rationale and cannot be skipped. However, the depth of work under each... step can and should be adapted to the realities of the operating environment and capacities.
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The International Organization for Migration (IOM) and partners from 27 humanitarian and development organisations and governments are appealing for USD 84 million to provide life-saving assistance to hundreds of thousands of African migrants and host community members affected by COVID-19 in the Ho...rn of Africa and Yemen. The many partners include the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Save the Children, among others.
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Discussions about climate change often focus on the future, but millions of children are experiencing its devastating impacts now. The scale of the crisis is huge, and growing fast. It is children that will bear the brunt of climate change, yet its impact on them is understudied, their voices are no...t being heard, and current solutions are woefully inadequate. It is a perfect storm that we must stop in its path – before it is too late.
Available in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic
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At the time of writing, the novel coronavirus pandemic had reached every region of the world, with millions of infections globally and untold disruptions to nearly every aspect of daily life.
Available in English, French and Spanish
Over the past two decades, Afghanistan has depended on international donor support to fund essential services like health care. But this donor support has been falling for years and will likely to continue do so—perhaps precipitously—following the announcement by United States President Joe Bide...n that the US will withdraw all US forces from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021. This decline in funding has already had a harmful—and life-threatening—impact on the lives of many Afghan women and girls, as it affects access to, and quality of, health care.
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Men are less likely than women to seek help for mental health issues and are much more likely to commit suicide. This scoping review examined recent evidence published in English and Russian on the role of socially constructed masculinity norms in men’s help-seeking behaviour for mental health iss...ues. The key sociocultural barriers to men’s help-seeking pertaining to masculinity norms were identified as self-reliance, difficulty in expressing emotions and self-control.
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Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2018, 15(12), 2626; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15122626
Climate change is increasing risks to human health and to the health systems that seek to protect the safety and well-being of populations. Health authorities require information about current associatio...ns between health outcomes and weather or climate, vulnerable populations, projections of future risks and adaptation opportunities in order to reduce exposures, empower individuals to take needed protective actions and build climate-resilient health systems. An increasing number of health authorities from local to national levels seek this information by conducting climate change and health vulnerability and adaptation assessments. While assessments can provide valuable information to plan for climate change impacts, the results of many studies are not helping to build the global evidence-base of knowledge in this area. They are also often not integrated into adaptation decision making, sometimes because the health sector is not involved in climate change policy making processes at the national level. Significant barriers related to data accessibility, a limited number of climate and health models, uncertainty in climate projections, and a lack of funding and expertise, particularly in developing countries, challenge health authority efforts to conduct rigorous assessments and apply the findings. This paper examines the evolution of climate change and health vulnerability and adaptation assessments, including guidance developed for such projects, the number of assessments that have been conducted globally and implementation of the findings to support health adaptation action. Greater capacity building that facilitates assessments from local to national scales will support collaborative efforts to protect health from current climate hazards and future climate change. Health sector officials will benefit from additional resources and partnership opportunities to ensure that evidence about climate change impacts on health is effectively translated into needed actions to build health resilience.
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