The Uganda COVID-19 Response and Emergency Preparedness Project objective is to prevent, detect, and respond to the threat posed by COVID-19 and strengthen national systems for public health preparedness in Uganda. Uganda has developed a one-year national COVID-19 Preparedness and Response Plan costing $126.2 million, through which the Ugandan Government, the World Bank and other development partners have aligned financial support to respond to the outbreak.
BIC has identified several initial concerns.
1. How will stakeholders be engaged? Civil society has expressed concerns about the lack of meaningful stakeholder engagement during project design, thus increasing the risk that affected groups could face adverse effects without an effective mechanism to respond or contribute feedback. To date, civil society, including those part of the Global Financing Facility Multi-Stakeholder Country Platform, have still not been meaningfully engaged in consultations around the project.
2. How is this project related to the Uganda Reproductive Maternal and Child Health Improvement Project? The lack of information around Uganda's coordinated and comprehensive response to COVID-19 has generated concerns about how these projects overlap and how they will affect Uganda’s health and recovery, including the continuity of basic health services.
The total project cost is $15.2 million. $12.5 million will be provided by IDA and $2.7 million by the Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility.
The World Bank should be responsive to civil society's requests for information and consultation and take into consideration concerns around inclusive project design and implementation. Additionally, this project needs to recognize the importance of continuing basic health services and how the COVID-19 response fits into the larger health system in Uganda.
