Communicable diseases are a major burdenof disease among the poor, and communicable disease controlis central to achieving the Millennium Development Goals(MDG) adopted at the Millennium Summit in 2000. Over theyears communicable disease control has featured prominentlyin several strategic Bank documents. In the 1997 Health,Nutrition, and Population (HNP) Sector Strategy communicabledisease control was one of the essential HNP priorities. The2007 HNP sector strategy made extensive reference to theneed for synergy between communicable disease control(especially disease-specific projects) and health systemstrengthening. Communicable diseases also feature as one offour priority areas in the global public good strategictheme in the Bank's six strategic themes identified in2007. This paper is organized into five chapters. Thefollowing chapter describes the sample of projects coveredin this review and the methodology. The results of thereview of approved and closed projects follow in the thirdand forth chapters, respectively, and the last chaptersummarizes the conclusions.