By Iddi Yire, GNA
Accra, Sept. 21, GNA – President John Dramani Mahama has launched the Accra Reset Presidential Council’s report dubbed “A Sovereign Future for Health”.
The launch was done on the sidelines of the 81st UN General Assembly Meeting in New York, and the report sets out 10 practical recommendations for enhancing global health sovereignty.
President Mahama stated that the panel had completed its assignment, saying “the responsibility now falls on us to deliver its promise. We have come full circle; let us not go around in circles.
“Let this New Global Bargain begin today: Ownership backed by real control, Cooperation defined by human dignity; and promises that manifest as real protection for that baby girl born tonight, whether in Kathmandu, in Arusha, or in Damongo.”
He expressed his profound gratitude to members of the Accra Reset Presidential Council; namely former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and Laura Chinchilla, for their work.
“We are now moving from design to execution,” saying too often, visionary ideas were born with great fanfare, only to die quietly in New York’s diplomatic corridors, “we will not let that happen to the Accra Reset,” President Mahama stated.
He noted that over the coming months, Ghana and the Accra Reset Presidential Council would convene governments, global health bodies, development finance institutions, philanthropies, and the private sector, to translate these recommendations into country-level compacts.
“We invite strategic partners, from Brazil’s Fiocruz to leading institutions in India, Indonesia, the Gulf, and across Africa, to partner with us. We want to build self-sustaining networks that connect research, regulatory oversight, local manufacturing, and reliable distribution,” he stated.
He said this sovereign health agenda was not a retreat into isolationism, to seek pragmatic interdependence: a mature, equal partnership where we see one another as equals.
President Mahama said stronger, self-reliant Southern partners were not a threat to the Global North; declaring that on the contrary, resilient health systems in Africa and Asia made the entire world safer for all of them.
He warmly welcomed the leaders from France, Spain, the United Kingdom, the G77, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the Commonwealth who were at the event.
He also expressed his special thanks to Prime Minister Gordon Brown for accepting the mantle to mobilise global political leadership around this New Global Bargain.
President Mahama said some argued that structural reform must wait until global geopolitical tensions ease; saying “I respectfully disagree. Crisis is precisely when new paradigms are forged.”
He said many times, out of chaos were born new ideas and partnerships, stating that health was every human’s most precious possession.
The President said it was the reason for selecting health as the first battleground for the global reset, and why maternal and child health was its first critical test.
He said statistics had shown that globally, nearly seven out of 10 maternal deaths occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa, “And my own country, Ghana, is still three times above the recommended SDG target. This is unacceptable.”
President Mahama said through the Mother Africa initiative, championed by President Samia Suluhu Hassan of Tanzania, and the Business United for Mothers, Babies and Youth (BUMBY) campaign, they were bringing public policy and corporate responsibility together to safeguard the lives of mothers and children.
He noted that these initiatives would stress-test their new financial and governance architecture in real-time, delivering measurable results where they matter most.
President Mahama expressed his appreciation to Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), for his steadfast support of global health reform.
He said as Ghana prepared to assume the Chairmanship of the African Union in 2027, they would carry the Reset Agenda into the heart of Africa’s collective policy framework, working collaboratively with the Non-Aligned Movement and the G77 plus China.
GNA
Edited by Christabel Addo