World Bank loans to fight HIV

The World Bank approved on Friday a US $112.3-million loan to Burkina Faso and Nigeria to help the two countries fight HIV/AIDS. Burkina Faso will receive US $22 million to cover the next five years of an ongoing AIDS Disaster Response Project. The loan would go towards prevention, care and treatment, with an emphasis on vulnerable groups such as the youth, women, commercial sex workers and “highly mobile workers”, the bank said in statement on Friday. The loan will also be used to strengthen the work of public, private and community institutions in the West African nation, which has the second highest HIV-prevalence rate in the region. Nigeria will receive US $90.3 million for activities under the government’s three-year HIV/AIDS Emergency Action Plan, including prevention, care and treatment. Nigeria has the fourth worst infection rate in the region, with an estimated three million infected and some 1.7 million who have died since the country’s first case in 1986. Both loans are part of the bank’s US $500-million package for the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa and will be financed by the International Development Association, the bank’s lending arm for poor countries.