Funding will support the World Bank’s new Financial Intermediary Fund to expand low- and middle-income countries’ pandemic prevention and response programs
NEW YORK | July 14, 2022 – The Rockefeller Foundation announced up to $15 million in funding to the World Bank in support of its new Financial Intermediary Fund (FIF) to bolster pandemic prevention and response in low- and middle-income countries. The Rockefeller Foundation joins the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust as founding donors from the philanthropic sector to help set up a Secretariat at the World Bank with technical leadership from the World Health Organization (WHO) and broad support from the G20. With over $1 billion already announced for the new fund, including contributions from the European Union, Germany, Indonesia, Singapore, United Kingdom, and United States, the World Bank and WHO will work closely with the foundations and other key partners to develop the detailed scope and design of a new FIF.
“The pandemic’s devastation remains inequitable for a reason: since the first Covid-19 infection, wealthier countries have had the ability to pay for early, frequent access to tests, treatments, and other tools, while low- and middle-income countries have been left behind,” said Dr. Rajiv J. Shah, President of The Rockefeller Foundation. “The World Bank’s Financial Intermediary Fund will help break this inequity by empowering these low- and middle-income countries with the tools and capacity they will need to help prevent and respond to outbreaks.”
The fund, which should be operational later in 2022, aims to strengthen and sustain global, regional, and country-level capacity by providing $10.5 billion per year over the next five years. It is expected to initially focus at the country-level with priority areas such as disease surveillance, laboratory systems, health workforce, emergency communication and management, and community engagement.
“We know what works in preventing and managing pandemics: early detection, rigorous monitoring, and rapid response,” said Dr. Naveen Rao, Senior Vice President of Health at The Rockefeller Foundation and the Board Chair of the Pandemic Prevention Institute. “The Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute is well suited to work alongside country, regional, and global partners in executing these efforts so we can get ahead of, and respond to, public health threats effectively.”
This commitment is part of The Rockefeller Foundation’s long history of funding initiatives that seek to improve health outcomes for the world’s most vulnerable populations, including its global campaign against hookworm over 100 years ago; seeding the development of the yellow fever vaccine; supporting translational research for tools including penicillin; spurring AIDS vaccine development; and then creating the Pandemic Prevention Institute in 2021 to help the world detect, prevent, and mitigate pandemic threats and to achieve containment as quickly as possible. The Institute is actively seeking new partners to define and invest in a common agenda through the RF Catalytic Capital, Inc. (RFCC), the public charity that The Rockefeller Foundation created in 2020 to enable foundations, governments, and other like-minded funders to combine their resources to build funding solutions for social impact and bring about transformational change.
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