The World Bank (WB) is to provide financial assistance to Bangladesh for tackling the growing menace of arsenic poisoning in this tiny southeast Asian nation. A programme is expected to be finalised by mid-1998, said Pierre Lendis Mills, WB's country chief in Bangladesh. He announced that an amount of US $50 million has been earmarked for this purpose. The United Nations Development Programme is taking up a pilot programme for studying arsenic pollution, and this will be the basis for the WB-aided larger programme, Mills said.