In the wake of recent polio and measles outbreaks on the island of Hispañola, the World Bank is providing over $600,000 to purchase vaccines in the Dominican Republic and $500,000 to support an immunization campaign in Haiti.

Once believed to have been eradicated in the Western Hemisphere, polio, a debilitating and paralyzing disease that can be fatal, resurfaced in the Dominican Republic last fall. When a polio case was also confirmed in neighboring Haiti, officials from both countries and the international community mobilized massive vaccination campaigns.

The Bank provided some $622,000 to the Dominican Republic this past December to purchase 120,000 doses of vaccines for diptheria, Hepatitis B, and Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib); 150,000 doses of measles/mumps/rubella vaccines; and 300,000 doses of measles vaccines. This assistance is part of a $3 million vaccination program that the Bank, in February 2000, pledged to provide to the Dominican Republic over the next five years.

The Bank's support is being provided in partnership with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). The Health Secretariat and the Health Sector Reform Commission of the Dominican Republic are administering the program.

"Our assistance to the campaigns in the Dominican Republic reflects the importance that the World Bank attaches to preventing and controlling communicable diseases," says Patricio Marquez, lead health specialist in the Bank's Latin America and Caribbean Region.

In neighboring Haiti, however, children are more likely to be affected by a seemingly benign but more irritating illness.

"There is still only one confirmed case of polio in Haiti, where the more serious issue is a measles outbreak," says Girindre Beeharry, Task Manager of the Bank's First Health Project in Haiti (the United States Centers for Disease Control is investigating other reported cases).

Indeed, there have been 1,112 cases of measles reported, of which 909 have been confirmed, according to PAHO officials in Haiti. Measles, the childhood infectious disease that causes a skin rash, can lead to pneumonia, croup or encephalitis when untreated.

To boost the government's response to the measles and suspected polio outbreak, the World Bank last week agreed to reallocate $500,000 from an existing health project to support an immunization campaign coordinated by PAHO. The funds will help train staff at vaccination sites; purchase equipment to operate and stock vaccination sites; raise awareness about the immunization campaign through the mass media; and evaluate the results of the campaign.

Beeharry notes, however, that while vaccination campaigns may help to stem outbreaks, they do not constitute a viable long-term strategy to deal with unacceptably low immunization coverage in the country.

To increase immunization coverage in Haiti, the Global Fund for Children's Vaccines, as part of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations, agreed this month to provide $500,000 to the Ministry of Health. GAVI is an international partnership dedicated to ensuring that all children, however poor, have equal access to vaccines for preventable life-threatening diseases. GAVI also works to spur the development of new vaccines against major killers that primarily affect the world's poorest people.

Over the past three decades, the number of people immunized against diseases in Latin America and the Caribbean jumped from 10 to 80 percent. From the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego, the World Bank has about $3 billion invested in health projects to sustain these gains and improve access and quality of health care services, especially among the poor.