April 27 (SeeNews) - The World Bank said it has approved a $100 million (92.2 million euro) loan to Turkey to support the country's health system amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
With the funds, Turkey's ministry of health will implement a project aimed at helping the government to slow the spread of the infection and reinforce the overall health system to detect and treat cases, the World Bank said in a statement on Friday.
The emergency health response project is financed through an Investment Project Financing (IPF) and has a 10.5-year repayment period, including a five-year grace period.
“The funding will strengthen Turkey’s capacity to avert the potentially high health and human cost of the COVID-19 pandemic by reinforcing mitigation and disease management,” Auguste Tano Kouame, World Bank country director for Turkey, said in the statement.
Earlier in April, the World Bank said that Turkey's economy is expected to grow by 0.5% in 2020, over 3 percentage points lower than the previous estimate, due to the outbreak of COVID-19.
Turkey has confirmed a total of 110,130 coronavirus cases and 2,805 deaths from the disease as of April 26, the country's directorate of communications (DoC) said on Monday.
($ = 0.9220 euro)