Accra: Prof. Muhammad Ali Pate, the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, has called for a new vision for a global ‘New Public Health Order’ for Africa, emphasizing domestic resource mobilization and local manufacturing of health products.
According to News Agency of Nigeria, Pate addressed the Africa Health Sovereignty Summit in Accra, challenging existing frameworks that he said reduce global health to a narrow set of diseases or priorities largely shaped by external narratives. He criticized the global health perspective that often focuses on a few priority issues like HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis, framing these issues through externally driven perspectives and leaving African voices, especially from poorer countries, less acknowledged.
The minister highlighted that most health progress in lower-income countries over the past 25 years has been dependent on domestic financing and local leadership, with donor support playing a complementary role. He warned that shifting geopolitics and nationalist tendencies demand a recalibration, stating that healthier populations cannot be built purely on the generosity of other nations and emphasizing the need for sovereignty and alignment with local needs.
Pate traced the evolution of global health to two contrasting legacies: the positive legacy of 19th-century international sanitary cooperation and the colonial legacy rooted in tropical medicine and neocolonial economic structures. He noted the continuity of structural inequities despite efforts like the Bandung Conference in 1955 and the Alma-Ata Declaration of 1978, stating that these efforts have often faltered in delivering meaningful reform.
He addressed systemic consequences such as the continued subordination of health to commercial and strategic agendas, the undermining of national agency by donor-driven priorities, and Africa’s deindustrialization weakening production capacity. Despite structural flaws and the emergence of over 70 global health partnerships, he warned of fragmentation and dwindling resources.
Pate outlined a seven-point strategic framework to reclaim leadership in global health. This includes forging a strategic South-South alliance, renegotiating trade agreements, championing true country ownership and accountability, pushing for a more independent and effective WHO, prioritizing domestic financing models, industrializing health trade under the African Continental Free Trade Area, and strengthening intellectual property protections while encouraging local innovation.
He emphasized the role of private sector investment models and public-private partnerships as vital complements to government-led reforms and reaffirmed his ministry’s commitment to bold reforms in primary care, financing, and digitization in Nigeria. Pate concluded by asserting that Africa must move from the sidelines to the center of global health governance, urging for leadership that is bold, just, and collaborative.