“World Bank President Jim Yong Kim announced Monday that at least $700 million would be made available over the next two years for women’s and children’s health needs in poor countries,” Agence France-Presse/GlobalPost reports. “Speaking at the United Nations, Kim said the money was to help developing countries meet the targets of the Millennium Development Goals [MDGs], by focusing programs on achieving results rather than just the gross deployment of resources,” the news agency adds (9/23). “Kim explained that under his leadership, the money disbursed by the institution will follow his new results-based financing focus to have more impact on collective efforts to save more women and children’s lives, instead of just pouring in resources like the World Bank had been doing until now,” according to Devex (Santamaria, 9/24).

According to Kim, the pledge will be financed “with new funding coming from the International Development Association (IDA), the Bank Group’s fund for the poorest countries to enable a national scale-up of successful pilot reproductive, maternal, and child health projects,” the U.N. News Centre notes (9/23). Monday’s announcement “comes on top of a September 2010 World Bank pledge to provide $600 million in IDA results-based financing for MDGs 4 and 5 by 2015; the World Bank has delivered on that pledge two years ahead of schedule,” a World Bank press release adds (9/23).