US provides additional $11.4m to Bangladesh as COVID assistance
The United States (US) has announced to provide an additional 11.4 million US dollars to Bangladesh as urgent COVID-19 assistance to accelerate the country’s efforts to roll out an effective COVID-19 vaccination campaign, reports BSS.
This assistance through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will also help Bangladesh battle the current wave of COVID-19 by providing life-saving medical and oxygen supplies, a US embassy press release said here today.
“This additional donation through the historic American Rescue Plan is part of our ongoing support to help Bangladesh fight COVID-19,” said US Ambassador to Bangladesh Earl Miller.
Mentioning that the US is the largest donor of assistance to Bangladesh’s COVID-19 response, the ambassador said, America has been Bangladesh’s closest partner for the past five decades working to improve public health.
“At this particularly challenging moment in the battle against the pandemic, our partnership is more important than ever,” Miller added.
The additional support will also help Bangladesh strengthen prevention efforts to reduce virus transmission in the community and enhance the quality of treatment and care for the growing numbers of patients across the country.
With this new funding, the US government provides a total of over $96 million to support Bangladesh’s response to COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic and continues to work closely with the government and other partners to protect the health of Bangladeshis.
Total US COVID-19 assistance includes the donation of 5.5 million doses of the Moderna vaccine and capacity-building support towards the rollout of the national vaccination campaign.
The US has also already committed $2 billion to support the worldwide COVAX vaccination effort, with a pledge of an additional $2 billion, making the United States the world’s largest donor for equitable global COVID-19 vaccine access.
Through USAID, the US Department of Defense, the US Department of State, and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US government has also provided medical supplies, ventilators, oxygen equipment, pulse oximeters, and millions of pieces of personal protective equipment (PPE) for frontline workers across Bangladesh.
US assistance has helped save lives and treat individuals infected with COVID-19 by strengthening testing capacity and monitoring, enhancing case management and infection prevention and control practices, improving laboratory and testing capacity, and improving the supply chain and logistics management systems, said the release.
The US support also focuses on protecting front-line workers and increasing the public’s knowledge about COVID-19, including ways to protect themselves, it added.
