President John Dramani Mahama has announced a high-level panel of the Accra Reset Initiative tasked with reforming the global health architecture and governance system.
The eighteen-member panel will be co-chaired by four distinguished global health leaders.
They are; Peter Piot, former Director-General of UNAIDS and Professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine; El Hadj As Sy, Chair of the Kofi Annan Foundation and former Under-Secretary General of the United Nations; Nisia Trindade, Minister for Health of Brazil and President Emerita of Fiocruz; and Budi Gunadi Sadikin, Minister for Health of the Republic of Indonesia.
The panel has been mandated to produce concrete, actionable proposals to restructure the global health order, which has historically treated governments of the Global South as passive recipients rather than sovereign actors with the right to shape the rules under which their people live.
“This initiative represents a fundamental reimagining of how global health governance should function in the 21st century,” said Felix Kwakye Ofosu, Spokesperson to the President and Minister for Government Communications.
The panel’s work will be guided by a High-Level Consultative Group, which includes leaders from the World Health Organisation (WHO), World Trade Organisation (WTO), the Global Fund, Africa CDC, AUDA-NEPAD, and the International Finance Corporation, among others.
According to the presidency, this structure creates a pathway for structured engagement with the principal organs of the existing global health system.
Notable panel members include Mohammed Pate, Nigeria’s Minister for Health; John Nkengasong, Executive Director of the MasterCard Foundation and former Director of Africa CDC; and Soumya Swaminathan, former Chief Scientist of WHO.
Michel Sidibé, former Executive Director of UNAIDS and former Minister for Health of Mali, has been appointed as Special Advisor to the High-Level Panel and Envoy of the Co-Chairs. Mr Sidibé brings decades of operational experience with the architecture the panel is charged with reforming.
The High-Level Consultative Group includes WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WTO Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and other prominent leaders from global health institutions.
