International support continues to help rebuild South Sudan
World Bank
Media Contact:
– In Washington:
– Timothy Carrington
– (202) 473 8133
– [email protected]
Feb 21, 2006 (WASHINGTON) — The Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS)
continues to receive international support for reconstruction and development
with the approval of a $25 million grant by the Oversight Committee of the
Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF) to provide direct financial and technical support
for the first year of a program aimed at strengthening the health system and
improving health service delivery.
The Southern Sudan Umbrella Program for Health System Development plans to
provide a total amount of $75 million over three years from the MDTF to
establish and strengthen core health sector systems and capacities in Southern
Sudan. The total program amount of $75 million from the MDTF will be matched
by $150 million from the GoSS with $40 million being made available for the
program’s first year.
As a result of the peace agreement, individual project-based humanitarian aid
is being replaced with a sector-wide approach to development assistance to
consolidate the many existing projects and to integrate activities which are
critical for ensuring coherent interventions, obtaining efficiency gains in the
use of resources, and facilitating recovery and development of the health
sector.
The program aims to expand basic health service delivery by developing policies
and capacities within the Health Ministry and by investing in infrastructure,
pharmaceuticals and equipment. A component of the program will meet the
immediate needs of the population, particularly the 75 percent of the
population of Southern Sudan without access to formal health services, by
providing high impact health interventions, including the distribution of
insecticidal nets for malaria prevention and water treatment products that
produce potable water, and the introduction of community-based treatment of
diarrhea and acute respiratory infection.
“True progress can be registered only through long-term, sustained
interventions,” said Jean-Pierre Manshande, World Bank Team Leader for the
program. “The Ministry of Health must establish a balance between the
immediate delivery of essential services to a significant proportion of the
population and the introduction of effective management and coordination
systems to ensure quality services over the longer term.”
The World Bank has also awarded grants in Northern Sudan, drawing on a separate
Multi-Donor Trust Fund established for that part of the country to focus on
consolidating the peace agreement, decentralization, and poverty programs.
Working in collaboration with other donors and the United Nations, the World
Bank administers the trust funds that were established as part of Sudan��s
Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
At a donor conference in Oslo last April, countries pledged $508 million to the
two MDTFs to help end Africa’s longest-running civil war by consolidating the
peace agreement between the National Government of Sudan in Khartoum and the
Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in the South. So far, US$484 million have
been committed to the trust funds for the period 2005-2007 by the Netherlands,
Norway, the EC, United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Greece.
A Sudan Consortium, established through the peace agreement and the donors
conference in Oslo, is responsible for reviewing the overall program, including
humanitarian, economic, social and institutional developments. The Consortium,
whose participants include representatives from the Sudanese governments, donor
agencies (including the World Bank and UN agencies), and civil society groups,
will meet in early March 2006.
For more information on the World Bank’s work in sub-Saharan Africa visit:
http://www.worldbank.org/afr
For more information about World Bank’s activities in Sudan visit:
http://www.worldbank.org/sudan