An 18-person high-level group has been announced by the Chancery of the Accra Reset, an African health and economic sovereignty movement supported by President John Dramani Mahama.
The panel’s assignment is to develop specific recommendations for reorganising a global health order that has viewed governments in the Global South as passive recipients rather than as independent entities with the authority to determine the laws that govern their citizens.
Felix Kwakye Ofosu, Minister for Government Communications and Spokesperson to the President, signed a press release on Friday that made this news.
Four individuals with extensive backgrounds in global health governance co-chair the panel: Budi Gunadi Sadikin, Minister of Health of the Republic of Indonesia; Nisia Trindade, Minister of Health of Brazil and President Emerita of Fiocruz; El Hadj As Sy, Chair of the Kofi Annan Foundation and former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations; and Peter Piot, former Director-General of UNAIDS and Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
The World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization, the Global Fund, Africa CDC, AUDA-NEPAD, and the International Finance Corporation are among the major organisations of the current global health system with which the panel’s work will be guided by a High-Level Consultative Group.
Michel Sidibe, a former Mali Minister of Health and Executive Director of UNAIDS, has been designated Special Advisor to the panel and Envoy of the co-Chairs. He brings decades of operational expertise with the very system that the panel is tasked with overhauling.
Health ministers, researchers, investment executives, and policy builders from Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the Pacific are among the eighteen panellists.
Mohammed Pate, Nigeria’s Minister of Health; John Nkengasong, Executive Director of the MasterCard Foundation and former Director of the CDC for Africa; Precious Matsoso, Co-Chair of the WHO Pandemic Treaty Negotiation; and Soumya Swaminathan, former WHO Chief Scientist.
Moustapha Cisse, the founder of Google Africa’s first AI lab, Magda Robalo, co-chair of UHC2030, Catherine Kyobutungi, executive director of the African Population and Health Research Center, and health officials and experts from Japan, Singapore, Argentina, Fiji, Brazil, Sweden, and the United Arab Emirates are among the other members.
Some of the most well-known figures in international health organisations are members of the High-Level Consultative Group. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Global Fund Executive Director Peter Sands, UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima, and Africa are among its members.
AU Commissioner for Health Amma Twum-Amoah, CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya, UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima, IFC Managing Director Makhtar Diop, and Executive Head of the Pandemic Fund Priya Basu.
The World Health Assembly and the UN General Assembly, among other bodies, are expected to ratify and endorse the panel’s terms of reference before it can begin work right away.
Source: newsthemegh.com