The World Bank and the State Bank of Vietnam today signed an Additional Financing to the Vietnam Avian and Human Influenza Control and Preparedness Project to help Vietnam to build on the past success to further improve their responses to the highly pathogenic avian influenza, human influenza, and other newly emerging zoonotic diseases, thereby provide better protection to more than 10 million people living in eleven project provinces.
Under this new operation, US$25 million will be provided to the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) to increase the effectiveness of public services in reducing the health risk to poultry and humans from avian influenza in eleven high priority provinces, through controlling the disease at source in domestic poultry, early detection and response to poultry and human cases of infection, and preparing for the medical consequences of a human pandemic.
Financing this project, US$13 million will be granted from the Avian and Human Influenza Facility (AHIF), US$2 million from the government’s counterpart funds, and US$10 million from the World Bank through its concessional lending arm low income countries (International Development Association).
This Additional Financing is the third operation that the Bank, in partnership with AHIF donors, has supported Vietnam in controlling the highly pathogenic avian influenza and improving the country’s preparedness for human influenza pandemic. The first two operations (total funding of US$40 million) were successfully implemented during the period of 2004 to 2011, including the Avian Influenza Emergency Recovery Project (AIERP) and the Vietnam Avian and Human Influenza Control and Preparedness Project (VAHIP).
Vietnam was among the countries that was most affected by avian influenza (H5N1). The first human case was report in 2003. As of March 2011, Vietnam has reported 119 confirmed human cases of H5N1, of which 59 were fatal. This represents 23 percent of the total number of human cases reported worldwide and 19 percent of the deaths.
