The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors recently approved a $500 million program to help Pakistan improve services, including civil registration and vital statistics, access to quality healthcare and education, as well as support economic opportunities for women, and strengthen social safety nets as the country braces to limit the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Securing Human Investments to Foster Transformation (SHIFT) program will support policy reforms to help Pakistan’s COVID-19 emergency response and protect human capital investments. It will support greater coordination between provinces and federal authorities to immunize millions of children and reduce their risks of contracting polio and other diseases. SHIFT also improves civil registration and vital statistics to target safety net programs that will benefit 12 million people impacted by the COVID-19 crisis, both at the federal and provincial levels.

To read more about this new program, please follow the hyperlink to read through the project documents.