President John Dramani Mahama has advocated the scaling up of African homegrown solutions for health challenges.
He said the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the African Medicine Agency, the African Continental Free Trade Area Health Corridors and the AUDA Nepal Resilience Agenda, needed to be scaled up to meet the growing health needs of the continent.
These, he said, were symbols of an emerging African health ecosystem that was rooted in digital innovation and was grounded in data and designed for self-determination by African countries.
Related Stories
President Mahama stated this in his opening remarks at the Africa Health Sovereignty Summit in Accra.
He said nationally, African leaders must execute not merely plans; stating that this requires political will, domestic resource mobilization and effective leadership.
President Mahama reiterated that health was wealth and that they must reframe the economics of well-being.
“We must reject the outdated notion that health drains our economies. In truth, health is the engine of productivity and the bedrock of inclusive growth,” he said.
He noted that the World Health Organisation (WHO) had shown that for every $1 invested in health resilience, it yields up to $4 in returns.
“This return is even greater in Africa, where youthful populations represent latent economic dynamism. Every malaria case that is prevented is a day of work that you have regained,” he stated.
He said every maternal death that was avoided was a family that continued to remain stable.
He said every vaccinated child was a future secured for the nation.
He encouraged his fellow African leaders to urge their Ministers of Finance to treat health as a capital investment, and to encourage sovereign wealth funds, and to allocate resources to biotech, diagnosis and resilient infrastructure.
He urged them to call on economists to revise national accounts to reflect health as a productivity multiplier and not a consumption expense.
He suggested that globally, they must champion a new health governance architecture that reflected a multipolar, digitally interconnected, climate-challenged world.
He said health governance must be democratic, it must be just and it must be fit for the 21st century realities.
“Africa must no longer be the patient. It must be the driver. It must be the author. It must be the architect and the advocate of its own health destiny,” he stated.
“Let us remember that Africa is not new to global health leadership.”
President Mahama said when HIV and AIDS ravaged the African continent, African leaders like then Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and the late Kofi Annan of blessed memory helped catalyze global responses that birthed the Global Fund and Gavi.
Cited that when Ebola struck West Africa, then Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and her colleagues became a moral compass for the conscience of the continent.
He said during COVID-19, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, rallied the African Union into collective action on vaccine access.
He noted that today, President William Ruto of Kenya was leading the charge to eliminate malaria as a continental scourge.
He said currently, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda was the African champion on domestic health financing and was leading advocacy in building resilient, self-reliant African health systems.
President Mahama said in Ghana, they had not stood still; saying “We have uncapped our National Health Insurance Scheme financing, opening a fiscal space of about 3.5 billion cedis more for broader and deeper health coverage”.
He said they had launched the Ghana Medical Trust Fund, otherwise called Mahama Cares, a sovereign innovation mobilizing public, private and philanthropic capital to tackle chronic disease burdens like hypertension, diabetes and kidney failure.
He said the launch of their primary health care programme in the coming months, along with the recruitment of community health volunteers, would improve the general health and wellness of their citizens, marking a significant step forward in preventive care.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the WHO, said according to WHO’s latest analysis, health aid was project to decline by up to 40 per cent this year compared to just two years ago.
“This is not a gradual shift, it is cliff age; like certain medicines are sitting in warehouses and workers are losing jobs, clinics are closing and millions are missing care,” he said.
“We must all adjust to this new reality. But in this crisis lies opportunities. An opportunity to shake off the yoke of aide dependency and embrace a new era of sovereignty, self-reliance and solidarity.”
Former Nigerian President Olusengun Obasanjo reiterated the need for an Africa without aide but with strategic partnership.
GNA
