Economics & Development

The development objective of the Myanmar Health Assistance and Nutrition Support (HANS) Project for Myanmar is to deliver essential health and nutrition services and assistance to the vulnerable population, with a focus on women and children in Myanmar. The additional financing is proposed due to strong early performance, significant remaining unmet needs, and the opportunity to scale up coverage and sustain results in a fragile, conflict, and violence context while extending the closing date to June 30, 2030; it will expand beneficiary reach within the existing geographic footprint, add critical preventive child health services, and introduce Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) interventions to address preventable illness and undernutrition. The Bank will work through the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) to deliver an integrated package of primary and secondary health and nutrition services, maternal and child cash transfers accompanied by social behavior change communication, and operational support for preventive child health, including micro-planning, routine and catch-up service delivery, supply chain strengthening, community mobilization, transport support for poor households, and monitoring of adverse events and climate-sensitive diseases; the package will incorporate WASH at facilities and in communities, gender-based violence response in line with UN inter-agency standards, and third party monitoring under the Environmental and Social Framework. The project intends to reach 2,314,000 people with essential services, deliver cash assistance to 76,500 pregnant women and children under five, provide routine preventive child health services to approximately 129,000 underserved children, reach about 566,000 people with WASH supplies and hygiene promotion, strengthen local delivery capacity and results-based purchasing with private providers, and sustain healthcare jobs to preserve human capital and community-level institutions.