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President Mahama Introduces Health Task Force to Realign Ghana’s Budget With Health Priorities
President John Dramani Mahama has unveiled two national initiatives aimed at transforming Ghana’s health financing and governance, as well as advancing Africa’s role in shaping global health policy.
Speaking at the Africa Health Sovereignty Summit in Accra on Tuesday, August 5, 2025, the president announced the creation of the Presidential High-Level Task Force on Global Health Governance and the Sustain Initiative—short for Scaling Up Sovereign Transitions and Institutional Networks.
According to Mr Mahama, the task force will serve as a platform for Ghana to engage with both continental and international partners to reshape global health governance systems “to meet today’s realities rather than rely on outdated structures”.
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The Sustain Initiative, he explained, will align national budgets with health priorities while mobilising domestic, diaspora, and philanthropic funding to strengthen health systems. It will also encourage cross-border learning and improve accountability in the sector.
“The world has changed, but global health governance has not kept pace. We are called to redesign a system that has for too long ignored Africa’s voice, needs, and innovations.”
— President Mahama
He pointed to pandemics, armed conflicts, climate shocks, and economic instability as signs of a global health system under severe strain, adding that the drop in global development assistance in 2023 had immediate and damaging effects across Africa.
In Ghana, he noted, donor withdrawals nearly collapsed the Community-Based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) Compound Programme, disrupting maternal health services, delaying vaccine supplies, and creating drug shortages.
To protect the health sector, Mr Mahama said his government had “uncapped” National Health Insurance Scheme financing, releasing an additional $270 million for broader coverage. He also revealed plans to introduce a new primary healthcare programme in the coming months with technical support from the World Health Organisation (WHO), whose Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has committed to sending a team to assist with the design process.
Other measures include the deployment of community health volunteers to promote preventive care and wellness services. Highlighting a success story, Mr Mahama shared how a young mother in Dodowa survived childbirth complications because her local CHPS facility was digitally linked to a regional hospital — an example he described as “health sovereignty in action”.
The president stressed that health spending should be viewed as an investment rather than a cost. “Health is wealth. We must change the thinking that health weakens economies,” he said, urging stronger support for African-led health platforms like PanaBIOS for health verification, Propa for supply chain monitoring, and BioNTech’s vaccine development projects.
On the Accra Declaration for Health Sovereignty, currently under discussion at the summit, Mr Mahama described it as “a moral call to action” and a “strategic milestone for Africa”.
“Let Africa rise and take responsibility. Health is not a luxury. It is our freedom, our dignity, and our most valuable public good,” President Mahama.
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