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 The European Commission and the World Bank have agreed to a new avian flu trust fund arrangement under which the Commission will contribute €46 million to a new multi-donor financing mechanism administered by the Bank, called the Avian and Human Influenza (AHI) Facility.
The EC contribution will finance grants for countries in separate geographic windows - Central Asia, East and South Asia, Eastern Europe and Mediterranean Littoral - to increase human influenza pandemic preparedness, as well as preventing or progressively controlling avian influenza within these regions.
At the global level, the AHI Facility will help countries to prepare and implement integrated country action plans. The objective is to reduce the social and economic impact of avian influenza and to minimize the possibility of a human flu pandemic in developing countries with insufficient domestic resources and capacity to combat the disease.
This commitment by the European Commission represents more than 80 percent of the total commitment to date by donors to the facility.
www.worldbank.org/avianflu
•Date: 8th June 2006• Region: World • Type: Article •Topic: Pandemic planning
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