The Chancery of the Accra Reset, an African health and economic sovereignty initiative championed by President John Dramani Mahama, has announced the establishment of a high-level panel on Reform of the Global Health Architecture and Governance.
A statement issued by Mr Felix Kwakye Ofosu, the Presidential Spokesman and Minister of State in-charge of Government Communications, said the 18 member panel co-chaired by Peter Piot, El Had As Sy, Nisia Trinidade and Budi Gunadi Sadikin, had a mandate to produce concrete, actionable proposals for restructuring a global health order that had treated governments of the Global South as passive takers rather than as sovereign actors with the right to shape rules under which their people live.
It said the Panel’s work would be guided by a High-Level Consultative Group which creates a structured engagement pathway with the principal organs of the existing global health system which includes the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Global Fund, Africa CDC, African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) and the International Finance Corporation.
The statement said the Panel was expected to commence work immediately, and their terms of reference will be ratified and adopted with substantive inputs from the World Health Assembly, the UN General Assembly among other notable bodies.
It said Mr Michel Sidibe, former Executive Director of UNAIDS and former Minister of Health of Mali, had been appointed as Special Advisor to the High PANEL and Envoy of the co-Chairs.
It noted that Mr Sidibe brings to the role, decades of operational engagement with the architecture the Panel 1s charged with reforming.
GNA
