The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors has approved a US$30.6 million health project to improve regional coordination and resilience for public health emergencies and extreme weather events in four member states of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS).

The OECS Regional Health Project will help improve the climate resilience of selected health facilities in Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The project will also strengthen the capacity of health systems in the OECS region to ensure continuity of services following an extreme weather event, and boost disease surveillance systems to detect and respond to infectious diseases more rapidly.

The project is a combination of interest-free credits and grants financed through the International Development Association credit, the concessional financing arm of the World Bank. In previous years, the World Bank has provided a total of US$157 million in financing to support heath initiatives across the Caribbean.