ADB approves 100 mln-USD loan to improve health care in NW Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a 100 million-U.S. dollars results-based loan to help strengthen the quality of secondary health care in Pakistan's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the ADB said on Thursday.

The program will help improve the delivery of health services at secondary hospitals by modernizing infrastructure and equipment, ensuring that clinical protocols, standards, and guidelines are implemented, and improving human resources planning and medicine supply chain management, the ADB said in a statement.

In response to the floods, the ADB is preparing a significant response package to support people, livelihoods, and infrastructure immediately and in the long term, it said.

It further added that the bank has already approved a 3 million-dollars grant to fund the immediate purchase of relief goods such as food supplies and tents.

The ADB is also processing a separate countercyclical package to help Pakistan weather the impacts of external shocks, according to the statement.