Bangladesh and the World Bank on Sunday signed a multi-donor deal to funnel $460 million into the impoverished south Asian country's health sector.
Five development partners from Britain, Sweden and the Netherlands, as well as the European Commission and the United Nations, will pool their finances for the health, nutrition and population sector programme (HNPSP) in a trust fund administered by the World Bank.
"This is a way to channel $460 million of development partner grant funds into the country's health sector," said Christine Wallich, the World Bank's Bangladesh country director.
Germany has also pledged money through the KfW. The HNPSP is designed to help modernise Bangladesh's health sector and speed up progress towards reaching health-related millennium development goals. It is supported by $4.3 billion in government and donor funding for 2003-10, the World Bank said.
Total donor support to HNPSP is around $1.3 billion.
The World Bank is also providing a $300 million credit with other development partners providing about $570 million outside the pool.
"Infant mortality in Bangladesh is now lower than in India, even though Bangladesh's per capita income level is well below that of its neighbour. Bangladesh also outperforms India on child malnutrition," Wallich said. But it still has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality.
Health and Family Welfare Minister Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain said Bangladesh's infant mortality rate had dropped to 51 per 1,000 live births from three times that number in the mid-1970s.