President John Dramani Mahama has justified the decision of Ghana to reject the proposed US health compact, which he said contained some unacceptable conditions.
Mr. Mahama, while speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, revealed that the Cabinet rejected the proposal, following a review by the Ministry of Health, which highlighted some objections to the agreement. The President said the ministry drafted a Cabinet Information Paper after detecting a number of contentious issues in the proposed agreement.
According to Mr. Mahama, one of the conditions of the compact, which the US designed to replace the health funding provided by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), was for Ghana to give the US its pathogen profile and medical records.
“It says that we shall give the United States our pathogen profile. It says we should give our medical records. I mean who takes another country’s medical records?” he questioned.
The President further stated that counterpart funding would be required for Ghana to access the funding, while a portion of the drugs and medical supplies imported into Ghana would not be subjected to the inspection of the Food and Drugs Authority.
President Mahama described the conditions as humiliating and said the Cabinet swiftly rejected the US proposal. The proposed compact which the US put forward to 14 African countries impacted by the reductions in aid budget would give $100 million to some of Africa’s countries to support their public health systems and help fight disease outbreaks.
Ghana’s Ministry of Health is yet to remove USAID from its list of development partners, despite the agency’s support for the country’s health sector.
