With proactive planning and investment in health and other sectors—and the support of partners like ADB—the six countries of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) are meeting the challenge of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic while ensuring faster economic recovery.
Through two decades of investments, ADB has supported GMS countries’ efforts to develop core health system capacities for responding to public health threats, while simultaneously building a foundation for enhanced regional cooperation on health security, including $145 million in loans and grants to Cambodia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar, and Viet Nam through the GMS Health Security Project.
The project allows funds to be quickly reprogrammed to address major public health emergencies. When COVID-19 struck, reallocated funds helped governments across the GMS to purchase PPEs, ventilators, bedside monitors, and other equipment, and allowed them to adopt new measures to control COVID-19, including the rapid dispatch of thermal scanners to points of entry.
