President John Dramani Mahama is today convening the “Geneva Clarion Call,” a high-level global dialogue under the Accra Reset initiative aimed at reshaping health governance and closing the growing gap in international health financing.
The event, scheduled to take place at the Global Health Campus in Geneva, is expected to bring together a coalition of leading global health institutions, including the World Health Organization, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, The Global Fund, the Pandemic Fund, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
The initiative comes at a time of mounting uncertainty within the global health system, following a sharp reduction in development assistance and the withdrawal of the United States from the WHO earlier this year.
In a statement issued on Monday, Presidential Spokesperson and Minister for Government Communications, Felix Kwakye Ofosu, said the Geneva Clarion Call forms part of Ghana’s broader effort to move beyond aid dependency toward what he described as “practical sovereignty” in healthcare delivery.
“Since convening the Africa Health Sovereignty Summit in 2025, Ghana has led a movement to move beyond traditional aid toward ‘practical sovereignty,’” the statement said.
According to the statement, the Accra Reset initiative is guided by a Presidential Council made up of leaders from Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Kenya, Togo and Barbados, with additional support from a “Guardians’ Circle” of elder statesmen and women.
The Geneva meeting is expected to unveil three interlocking sovereign health instruments designed to transform health delivery systems and address structural weaknesses in global healthcare financing.
The statement described the current global health funding environment as a crisis, revealing that development assistance for health declined from $49.6 billion in 2024 to $39.1 billion in 2025.
“The world is witnessing an unprecedented contraction in health funding,” the statement noted.
It added that Africa remains heavily dependent on imported medical products, importing “99% of its vaccines and 70% of its medicines.”
“The Accra Reset aims to reverse this dependency by establishing sovereign delivery systems that bypass traditional implementation bottlenecks,” the statement added.
The 90-minute programme will feature several high-profile global health leaders, including Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Vanessa Kerry, and former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark.
The event will run from 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM Central European Summer Time, corresponding to 2:30 PM Ghana time, and will be livestreamed on President Mahama’s social media platforms, the Ghana Presidency Facebook page, Africa.com and major television networks across Ghana.
Story: Patrick Asford Boadu
