Health

The World Bank Group is committed to helping developing countries achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC) through stronger, more resilient health systems and providing quality, affordable health services to everyone – especially the most vulnerable. But progress towards achieving UHC remains off track. By prioritizing health, countries build the foundation for the human capital that drives job creation, shared prosperity and improved societal well-being.

The World Bank’s ambitious plan to support countries to deliver quality, affordable health services to 1.5 billion people by 2030 aims to address the significant inequities that leave half of the global population without essential health services and 2 billion people facing severe financial hardship due to healthcare costs. 

Shrinking fiscal space, emerging disease challenges and threats, climate change and fragility, along with aging populations significantly impact access to quality, affordable health services for all. 

This includes scaling four key solutions: implementing sustainable financing reforms, redesigning primary care for emerging challenges like non-communicable diseases and aging, creating predictable regulatory environments for private sector engagement, and strengthening the health workforce through digital innovations and mid-level provider training.

Ensuring that every woman and child has access to health care is also fundamental to ending poverty by unlocking human potential and building robust economies.

The Global Financing Facility for Women, Children and Adolescents (GFF), a multi-stakeholder partnership hosted at the World Bank has been supporting countries with the world’s highest maternal and child mortality burden and financial needs. Since the GFF was founded in 2015, partner countries have made significant progress to improve maternal and child health.

Last Updated: Apr 18, 2025

A focused effort to become faster, work better with partners, and bring in the private sector is at the heart of our strategy to pursue greater scale and impact and to reach 1.5 billion people with quality health services by 2030. The strategy is anchored in close collaboration with countries and drives financing centered on key evidence-based solutions:

• Strengthen primary care platforms based on best practice to expand quality services to non-communicable diseases, nutrition, aging related services and reach more people
• Implement financing reforms to increase domestic resource mobilization for health and improve the management and execution of public resources, enhance efficiency of spending including through better prioritization and reduce out of pocket costs to access primary care services
• Optimize and expand the health workforce through policy and regulatory reforms
• Increase private sector investments in health care through regulatory harmonization and private capital investments from IFC (transfer and capital mobilization and de-risking of investments).

This work will also strengthen human capital and increase people’s productivity, leading to economic growth. At the same time, it will create millions of jobs now for doctors, nurses, caregivers, paramedics, and indirect opportunities in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, digital health, and support services. 

Private companies, public institutions, and governments all play a vital role in improving health outcomes and driving economic growth. This includes training healthcare professionals, building essential infrastructure, and technologies to scale primary health services. Through strategic health investments, we can build stronger, more resilient societies. 

The World Bank is working closely with donors, development partners, governments, and the private sector on several key focus areas including, ending preventable maternal and child mortality; reducing stunting and improving nutrition for infants and children; strengthening health systems, creating health sector jobs, enhancing public health infrastructure; and ensuring pandemic preparedness and response.

Last Updated: Apr 18, 2025

Health, Economic Growth and Jobs

Investing in a skilled, healthy workforce, infrastructure, and technology are crucial for economic growth, job creation, and security. By prioritizing health, countries build the foundation for the human capital that drives job creation, shared prosperity and improved societal well-being. For example, investing in nutrition is smart economics, with every dollar spent generating up to $23 in returns through better health outcomes and increased productivity. But investing in health is not just about improved health outcomes—it is a catalyst for broader economic and employment benefits, particularly for women, who make up over 70% of the global health workforce but hold only 25% of senior roles.

However, insufficient investments in health continue to hinder progress. Governments in low-income countries spend less than 2% of GDP on health, leaving millions without essential care. Without strategic investments, health systems will struggle to meet the demands of aging populations, rising non-communicable diseases, and emerging health threats. This underinvestment leads to economic stagnation and reduced productivity. The World Bank estimates that failing to invest in health systems that support longevity could lead to economic losses amounting to billions annually, weakening long-term growth potential.

Strengthening Health Systems and Preventing Health Emergencies

Health emergencies pose a serious threat not only to global health security and to achieving universal health coverage, but also to economic security. While deadly disease outbreaks are inevitable, strong health systems help countries to better detect and respond to diseases and prevent an outbreak from becoming a pandemic. 

The COVID-19 pandemic inflicted devastating health and economic costs, but also created a once-in-a-generation chance for transformational health system changes. The World Bank is committed to helping developing countries achieve universal health coverage through stronger, more resilient health systems and provide quality, affordable health services to everyone – especially to the most vulnerable people. 

The World Bank was the largest single funder of the global COVID-19 health response with $14.3 billion committed to over 100 countries, including in 32 countries impacted by fragility, conflict and violence. Through this financing, the Bank continues to assist governments to strengthen health systems, disease surveillance, and public health interventions, and work with the private sector to reduce the impact on economies. 

The Pandemic Fund, housed at the World Bank, provides a dedicated stream of additional, long-term financing to strengthen pandemic preparedness and response (PPR) capabilities in low- and middle-income countries and addresses critical gaps through investments and technical support at the national, regional, and global levels. This multilateral financing mechanism complements other partnerships like the Global Financing Facility (GFF) and Health Systems Transformation and Resilience Fund to align investments behind country plans. 

Nutrition 

Nutrition interventions are consistently identified as one of the most cost-effective development actions. However, an estimated 149 million children under 5 are stunted (low height for age), which compromises not only child’s health and survival but also brain development, learning, and adult earnings, leading to long-term impacts on countries’ human capital formation. Over 70% of countries — the vast majority of which are low- and lower-middle-income countries — currently face a double burden of malnutrition: a high prevalence of both undernutrition and obesity.

The Investment Framework for Nutrition 2024, shows that investments to scale up high-impact nutrition interventions could save the lives of 6.2 million children under age five and prevent 980,000 stillbirths over the next decade. Such programs would also avert 27 million cases of child stunting and 144 million cases of maternal anemia. Both undernutrition and obesity are obstacles to human capital, economic productivity, and an equitable, prosperous world. The economic benefits of nutrition interventions far outweigh the costs of inaction. In fact, every dollar invested in combating malnutrition yields a $23 return through improved productivity and health outcomes.

Investing in Healthy Longevity

Compounding these challenges is the rapid aging of populations worldwide, fueling a surge of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and health care costs around the world.

NCDs are the cause of 70 % of deaths globally, with most of these deaths occurring in low- and middle-income countries. Despite advances in reducing communicable diseases, rates remain high in many parts of the world for malnutrition, unmet need for sexual and reproductive health services, and maternal mortality.

But there is an opportunity to leverage population aging for health, societal, and economic gains by investing today in health and wellbeing across people’s lives. This includes measures to control NCDs and their risk factors which contribute to a large and growing burden of avoidable mortality. Our recent report shows that investing in healthy longevity could save 150 million lives in low- and middle- income countries and extend millions more by 2050, generating significant economic benefit.

Health Financing

World Bank research shows that following global economic shocks from the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the spending capacity of governments has started to decline or stagnate in many low- and lower middle-income countries. Without bold choices, these countries will be unable to make the necessary investment to strengthen public health preparedness and make progress toward universal health coverage. 

In 41 countries, government spending until 2027 is projected to remain lower than before COVID-19, restricting their ability to invest in critical areas, including health. In addition, rising interest payments on public debt further threaten the capacity of many countries to invest in health. Without immediate action, many low- and lower middle-income countries will be left behind on the path to health and economic recovery leading to growing inequalities between countries, threatening global stability, and prosperity. 

One challenge countries are facing is budget execution. A  recent report proposes solution models for governments and offers a more purposeful and collaborative budget implementation approach that involves finance, health and local government stakeholders.

Climate Change and Health

Unabated climate change is also expected to make the global goal of poverty reduction even more challenging to reach. A recent World Bank study estimates that climate change may push an additional 132 million people (more than half of whom live in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia), into extreme poverty by 2030, with 44 million of these driven by health impacts. 

As the largest climate financier, and the biggest funder of health systems, the World Bank is committed to increasing its investments in climate-health action. Through its Health and Climate Program, it is integrating climate considerations through its $27 billion health portfolio which is active in over 100 countries. 

The World Bank has already made significant climate-related health investments across more than 100 countries – with 80 percent of its investments allocated to adaptation interventions such as urgent nutrition support, surveillance systems, and emergency response centers.

Last Updated: Apr 18, 2025

Improving health outcomes is a key focus at the World Bank Group. Together with partners, the WBG has provided health services to 750 million people over the last five years. This is the result of the World Bank’s strong focus on preserving and strengthening primary health care systems to cope with health emergencies, and providing services for the most vulnerable, crisis-hit, and hardest-to-reach populations. Looking ahead, our new corporate scorecard will hold us accountable by monitoring the number of people reached with quality health services through World Bank-financed operations.

The World Bank supports countries to drive better health outcomes, economic gains and sustainable jobs:

• In Indonesia, the World Bank has supported major health and nutrition reforms, contributing over $5 billion since 2018. With co-financing from development partners, efforts have expanded health insurance to 98% of the population by 2024. National stunting rates dropped nearly 10 percentage points over five years, supported by training thousands of community volunteers. Programs also strengthened care in remote regions, improved service quality, and created jobs, boosting health outcomes and local economic resilience.
• In Tanzania, 30 hospitals rolled out a private sector program combining medical equipment and on-the-job training for health workers that led to a 75% drop in maternal deaths and a 40% drop in newborn deaths. It’s now being scaled nationwide with domestic financing and support from IDA, the World Bank fund for the poorest countries.
• In Argentina, the World Bank supports the modernization of healthcare through an integrated health care network in the most vulnerable municipalities of Buenos Aires Province. The program advances the digitization of the Integrated Health Record in more than 150 provincial hospitals and municipal health care centers and develops telemedicine for remote medical care.
• In Côte d’Ivoire World Bank support helped scale the National Health Insurance program, raising enrollment from 10% in 2023 to 62% by April 2025, with a target of 80% by August 2025. Reforms included mobile enrollment campaigns, improved premium collection, and new public-private partnership regulations—expanding access and building a more resilient, inclusive health system. Our support also creates more than 10,000 direct jobs through the National Health insurance program. 
• In Nigeria: The $650 million IDA-financed Nigeria Improved Child Survival Program for Human Capital (IMPACT) is a 10-year engagement, spanning from 2020 to 2030 to improve and increase immunization and malaria services in selected states. By September 2022, the project had already surpassed its two-year targets, despite the disruption of services as a result of COVID-19. For example, the percentage of children (12-23 months old) vaccinated fully vaccinated against DPT and hepatitis B increased from 49% in June 2020 to 57% in August 2022. Similarly, the percentage of children under age 5 who slept under insecticide nets increased from 28% to 41% over the same period. The second phase of the project will begin in 2025 and will support the country’s new primary health care financing reform.

Last Updated: Apr 18, 2025