On 30th April 2020, The United States Agency of International Development(USAID), one of the leading aid agency of the government of United States has announced an additional grant of 3 million USD in addition to the 2.9 million USD announced on 6th April 2020 to help India to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
Key Points:
i.The USAID provided 5.9 million USD to assist India in the COVID-19 pandemic to enable India control the spread of COVID-19 by providing care for the affected, disseminated essential public health messages to communities and finding and surveillance of COVID-19 cases.
ii.The Funds are provided to the innovative financing platform, Partnerships for Affordable Healthcare Access and Longevity(PAHAL) project.
iii.The PAHAL project is to support solving social problems, market based solutions and target the underserved and catalysing the scale and impacts
The USAID will support National Health Authority(NHA) to set up a financial facility to mobilize resources from the private sector to assist the health facilities(around 20,000) enrolled under Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana(PMJAY) to aid 500 million people.
iv.Kenneth Juster, US Ambassador to India stated that the funding will support India’s response to COVID-19.
About PAHAL:
Partnerships for Affordable Healthcare Access and Longevity(PAHAL) is a USAID and IPE’s flagship innovative platform to promote health financing models.
Project Director– LM Singh
Technical resource: Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MOHFW), Government of India.– Dr.Dinesh Agarwal
