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Last month, in light of the slow response to the
Ebola outbreak in Africa, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim
proposed setting up a global pandemic emergency facility.
Speaking to reporters ahead of a G20 meeting in Australia, Kim
said funds for the facility could be raised on the international
bond markets and paid back over time.
"This is something that we do all the time anyway inside the
World Bank Group and it's a way of utilizing all of our
technical capacity to help provide a buffer, a virtual buffer,
for the global economy and for poor countries that don't have
sufficient public health infrastructure should an epidemic break
out," he said.
"I think there are other instruments already that we have that
do similar things, so in the next six months to a year, I think
we could get a full concept plus some details of how this would
work in front of the global community."
Kim said he has spoken about the facility to many finance
ministers and with IMF's Christine Lagarde.
"There has been quite a bit of interest," he said.
(Reporting by Ian Chua; Editing by Robert Birsel)
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