The World Bank provides financial and technical support to help create a world free of poverty on a liveable planet. Ensuring that everyone has access to essential services and that the underlying systems are effective, equitable and sustainable is a critical part of that undertaking. The World Bank also puts health at the heart of its Human Capital Project to drive more and better investments in people. It prioritizes working with countries and global partners to strengthen resilience to shocks and crises––from health emergencies to climate and humanitarian crises, including situations affected by fragility, conflict and violence.
The World Bank has long recognized the threat HIV poses to development. The breadth and depth of the Bank’s portfolio affords important opportunities to advance integrated approaches that can improve outcomes and systemic support for HIV responses. The Bank integrates HIV into effective and equitable health systems and into its broader efforts to advance sustainable development for all, including through progress on key contributors to success such as social protection, education and empowering women, girls and youth.
In 2022-2023, the World Bank achieved the following key results:
- Supported women and girls empowerment, Over 90% of World Bank operations are “gender tagged”, thereby indicating that they promote gender equality, the end of gender-based violence and the empowerment of women and girls. Many of those initiatives highlight health, education and social and economic empowerment, and all of them also support improved HIV outcomes.
- Leveraged HIV outcome enablers in social protection and education. With a social protection and jobs portfolio of US$ 26 billion, the World Bank supported over 500 projects, including more than US$ 1.6 billion in new financing to 16 countries in 2022 alone. The support reached more than one billion people, reducing HIV vulnerabilities and empowering people to protect themselves and access services
- Increase resilience to shocks. The World Bank redoubled its efforts to help countries maintain essential services and boost the resilience of systems essential to the HIV response to crises such as pandemics, conflict and instability
- Strengthened sustainability of HIV response. The World Bank addressed fiscal space issues; provided financing for health and human capital; and supported transitions to greater domestic financing and improved efficiency. This also included conducting efficiency and effectiveness studies, support for key databases and tools to enable more country partners to conduct analytics.
- Improved service access and outcomes through greater integration (e.g. integration in health and knowledge as well as multisectoral integration). The World Bank’s health portfolio included over 200 projects which supported countries to improve outcomes and strengthen the health systems on which HIV responses rely. Moreover, HIV support was also integrated into non-health sector projects that affect key populations, such as transportation projects that include HIV service components to reach key populations.
