By Peter OBIORA InvestAdvocate

Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)-Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group Monday said the Bank Group has earmarked about $700 million on the health of women and children in poor countries by 2015.

This is contained in a Statement from the Bank Group and made available to InvestAdvocate.

“This new funding comes from the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank Group’s fund for the poorest countries, and will enable national scale-ups of successful pilot reproductive, maternal, and child health projects that were made possible by support from the Bank Group’s Health Results Innovation Trust Fund (HRITF) and IDA, the statement said.

This is coming on the heels of Kim’s September 2012 commitment to help scale up funding for MDGs 4 and 5 as part of the UN Secretary General’s Every Woman Every Child global partnership.

“We need to inject greater urgency into our collective efforts to save more women and children’s lives, and evidence shows that results-based financing has significant impact. The World Bank Group is committed to using evidence-based approaches to help ensure that every woman and every child can get the affordable, quality health care necessary to survive and live a healthy, productive life,” Kim said.

He said Monday’s $700 million announcement comes on top of a September 2010 World Bank pledge to provide $600 million in IDA results-based financing for MDGs 4 and 5 by 2015; “the World Bank has delivered on that pledge two years ahead of schedule. This support has contributed to global declines in maternal and child mortality and expanded access to health care for poor women and children,” he said.

Through results-based financing, the World Bank Group is working with countries to shift the focus from paying for inputs to paying for results. Payment to health service providers is explicitly tied to the successful delivery and independent verification of pre-agreed results. There is strong evidence that this approach work, Kim affirmed.

According to him, details shows that in Afghanistan, the number of women delivering their babies with the support of skilled birth attendants more than doubled from April 2010 to December 2012 in treatment facilities.

He said in Argentina, improved health services and accessibility for poor pregnant women and children led to a decrease in low birth weight and in-hospital deaths of babies in the first 28 days of life for program beneficiaries.

While in Africa Burundi, over just one year, births at health facilities rose by 25 percent, prenatal consultations went up by 20 percent, and the number of children fully vaccinated increased by 10 percent.

World Bank President Kim affirmed that further progress on women and children’s health will require a comprehensive approach to strengthening health systems, including investments beyond the health sector in critical areas such as water and sanitation, education systems, and labor markets.

“Its country-based approach reinforces national health strategies and priorities while building on the World Bank Group’s areas of comparative advantage in providing a multi-sectoral and systems-based approach to improving health. The HRITF, supported by the Governments of Norway and the United Kingdom, in turn reinforces this by providing countries with incentives to scale up their investments through IDA,”Kim said.

The post World Bank Earmark $700 Million on Health of Women, Children in Poor Countries appeared first on Investadvocate.

Nigeria and some other countries will no longer be eligible to participate in the America Diversity Visa lottery programme.

Information from the United States Department of State sighted on Sunday said Nigerians and citizens from few other countries were not eligible for DV-2015

The department said Nigeria was excluded since over 50,000 Nigerians had immigrated into the United States in the last five years.

The department listed other countries not eligible as Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China (mainland-born), Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador and Haiti.

Others are India, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, South Korea, United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and Vietnam

However, many African countries would continue to enjoy the programme.

Some of them are Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Cote D’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia and Ghana.

Others are Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles and Sierra Leone.

Diversity visas are said to be distributed among six geographic regions, while no single country could receive more than seven per cent of the available space in any year.

Already, advertsiements for the 2015 US DV lottery have started with several businesses inviting Nigerians to apply for the program.

Applications for the 2015 US DV lottery is expected to take off from October 1, 2013.

In 2012, 14,769, 658 persons were said to have qualified worldwide for the US DV lottery among the 19, 672, 269 which applied.

Source: Punch (by Comfort Oseghale)

The post Nigeria, 18 others barred from US visa lottery appeared first on Investadvocate.