By Sandra Kenneth
Ghanaian President John Mahama has sharply criticized the conditions attached to a proposed bilateral health compact with the United States, describing them as “humiliating” and revealing that his Cabinet rejected the agreement in record time.
Speaking during a session at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, President Mahama explained that the proposed deal—intended to replace traditional funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)—contained several unacceptable clauses that infringed on Ghana’s sovereignty and public health integrity.
According to President Mahama, a thorough review by Ghana’s Ministry of Health flagged multiple key concerns in the agreement, including:
Surveillance and Data Sharing: Requirements for Ghana to surrender its national pathogen profiles and citizen medical records to the United States. “I mean, who takes another country’s medical records?” Mahama questioned during the discussion.
Bypassing Regulatory Oversight: Stipulations that medical products and pharmaceuticals supplied under the program would bypass inspection by Ghana’s Food and Drugs Authority (FDA).
Counterpart Funding: Mandates requiring Ghana to commit specified national funds to match the bilateral agreement.
“It was humiliating,” President Mahama stated. “It was the compact that was thrown out in record time in our Cabinet. I’ve never seen anything thrown out as fast as that.”
Following the Cabinet’s swift rejection, the Minister of Health was instructed to inform the US Ambassador that Ghana would manage its healthcare system independently.
Negotiations over the proposed five-year, $109 million health assistance package originally broke down earlier this year due to privacy concerns. The subsequent withdrawal of $174 million in programmed external funding created immediate fiscal challenges, leaving an estimated $74 million annual shortfall in Ghana’s health sector along with funding gaps in education.
Despite these budgetary pressures, President Mahama framed the decision as a necessary step toward long-term self-reliance, linking the rejection to the Accra Reset—an initiative aimed at building local capacity for pharmaceutical and vaccine manufacturing while reducing Africa’s reliance on external health financing.
