The Chancery of the Accra Reset, an African health and economic sovereignty initiative championed by President John Dramani Mahama, has announced the establishment of an 18-member high-level panel
The panel is tasked with producing concrete proposals to restructure a global health order that has treated governments of the Global South as passive takers rather than sovereign actors with the right to shape the rules under which their people live.
This announcement was contained in a press statement signed by Spokesperson to the President and Minister for Government Communications, Felix Kwakye Ofosu on Friday.
The panel is co-chaired by four figures with deep roots in global health governance: Peter Piot, former Director-General of UNAIDS and Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; El Hadj As Sy, Chair of the Kofi Annan Foundation and former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations; Nisia Trindade, Minister of Health of Brazil and President Emerita of Fiocruz; and Budi Gunadi Sadikin, Minister of Health of the Republic of Indonesia.
According to the statement, the panel’s work will be guided by a High-Level Consultative Group that creates a structured engagement pathway with the principal organs of the existing global health system, including the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization, the Global Fund, Africa CDC, AUDA-NEPAD and the International Finance Corporation.
Former Executive Director of UNAIDS and former Minister of Health of Mali, Michel Sidibe, has been appointed Special Advisor to the panel and Envoy of the co-Chairs, bringing decades of operational experience with the very architecture the panel is charged with reforming.
The 18 panel members bring together health ministers, researchers, investment leaders and policy architects from across Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe and the Pacific.
They include Nigeria’s Minister of Health Mohammed Pate, John Nkengasong — Executive Director of the MasterCard Foundation and former Director of Africa CDC — Precious Matsoso, Co-Chair of the WHO Pandemic Treaty Negotiation, and Soumya Swaminathan, former Chief Scientist of the WHO.
Other members include Moustapha Cisse, Founder of Google Africa’s first AI Lab; Catherine Kyobutungi, Executive Director of the African Population and Health Research Center; Magda Robalo, Co-Chair of UHC2030; and health officials and experts from Japan, Singapore, Argentina, Fiji, Brazil, Sweden and the UAE.
The High-Level Consultative Group brings together some of the most prominent names in global health institutions. Its members include WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Global Fund Executive Director Peter Sands, UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima, Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya, UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima, AU Commissioner for Health Amma Twum-Amoah, IFC Managing Director Makhtar Diop and Executive Head of the Pandemic Fund Priya Basu.
The panel is expected to commence work immediately, with its terms of reference to be ratified and adopted with substantive inputs from the World Health Assembly and the UN General Assembly, among other bodies.
