World Bank group launches financing facility to protect poor countries against pandemics

The World Bank Group has launched a Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility PEF, an innovative, fast disbursing global financing mechanism designed to protect the world against deadly pandemics. 

This will create the first ever insurance market for pandemic risk. 

Japan, which is holding the G7 Presidency, committed the first 50 million dollars in funding toward the initiative.


A statement by the President of the World Bank Group, Jim Yong Kim said pandemics pose some of the biggest threats to people’s lives and to economies in the world. 

The initiative for the first time offers a system that can move funding and teams of experts to the sites of outbreaks before they spin out of control, thus addressing a long, collective failure in dealing with pandemics. 

He said the Ebola crisis in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone taught the world that there is the need to be much more vigilant to such outbreaks and respond immediately to save lives and protect economic growth. 


GBC