Global Partnership grants Yemen $6.23 million

The World Bank, on behalf of the Global Partnership on Output-Based Aid (GPOBA), signed last week in Sana’a a grant agreement for $6.23 million with two private healthcare providers in Yemen—the Saudi Yemeni Healthcare Company and al-Mawarid Company for Educational and Health Services—and a Yemeni non-governmental organization (NGO), SOUL for the Development of Women and Children, to improve maternal care for women in some of the poorest districts of Sana’a.  

Under the “Queen of Sheba Safe Motherhood Project,” up to 40,000 women of reproductive age in Sana’a are expected to receive a “Mother-Baby package” of essential good quality health services as defined by the World Health Organization, such as prenatal care, birth attendance by skilled birth attendants, postnatal care, and complicated care services.   

The GPOBA project will boost Yemen’s efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals of reducing child mortality and improving maternal health by targeting poor women who have limited access to basic health services.

The project is introducing an innovative Output-Based Aid approach, designed to target aid to the poor, link payments to performance, and encourage innovation, efficiency, and public-private partnership. GPOBA will subsidize 90 percent of the cost of the Mother-Baby package of services per woman. All services will be provided by the Saudi Yemeni Healthcare Company and al-Mawarid Company for Educational and Health Services mainly through community-based satellite clinics and hospital facilities for complicated care services. GPOBA will reimburse these companies only after they have actually delivered the healthcare services. GPOBA will also reimburse a portion of the costs incurred by SOUL, which is responsible for program promotion in the communities. 

Yemen has a ratio of 570 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births (according to 2000 estimates), with only 27 percent of births attended by skilled birth attendants, as well as a high fertility rate (average of seven children per woman). Poor women often go through pregnancy and delivery of children at home without seeking any medical care, due to factors such as poor access to quality health services, distrust of healthcare providers, lack of female doctors, and the price of care.  

“The GPOBA program will seek to address some of the barriers to safe motherhood by improving healthcare services and by working with poor communities to increase the use of these services,” said Patricia Veevers-Carter, Program Manager for GPOBA.

This GPOBA project will draw on contributions from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, and will build on IFC’s existing partnerships with the Saudi Yemeni Healthcare Company and the Al-Mawarid Company for Educational and Health Services. Guy Ellena, IFC Director for Health and Education, expressed that “we are happy to support our project partners in developing a scheme that can serve as a model – for private businesses in Yemen – of how to make socially responsible investments that contribute to the health of poor communities.”

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