Mahama exposes 'humiliating' requirements in trashed US Health Compact

President John Dramani Mahama disclosed the specific grounds on which Ghana immediately rejected a proposed Health Compact offered by the United States to replace USAID funding.

Addressing Ghana's status as a sovereign democratic nation with established governance processes, Mahama explained that the draft agreement was submitted to the Cabinet as an information paper by the Health Ministry before being swiftly turned down.

Speaking during an appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York, he said Cabinet members raised immediate flags over several key provisions within the document:

- Surrender of Biological and Health Data: The draft required Ghana to hand over its full pathogen output profile, detailing endemic diseases within the country, as well as national medical records to the United States.

- Domestic Financial Commitments: The agreement required Ghana to allocate a specific amount of its own capital into the healthcare programme to receive the funding.

- Bypassing National Regulators: The terms dictated that all foreign medical products and medications imported under the programme would be entirely exempt from inspection by Ghana's Food and Drugs Authority (FDA).

Characterising the terms as unacceptable for a sovereign country, Mahama noted that the Cabinet rejected the proposal in record time.

"It was humiliating, and so it was the compact that was thrown out in record time in our Cabinet," Mahama said during his address at the CFR.

"I've never seen anything thrown out as fast as that. And so, of course, we rejected it," he stressed.

The executive branch subsequently directed the Health Minister to inform the US Ambassador that Ghana would decline the estimated $100-plus million offer, maintaining that the nation can manage its own health sector without compromising its regulatory oversight or public health data.