Latest news with #healthsovereignty
Zawya
4 days ago
- Health
- Zawya
A Call to Action to End Cholera in Africa by 2030
On 4 June 2025, twenty African Union Member States most affected by cholera convened for an extraordinary high-level meeting, following a call by Africa CDC and under the leadership of H.E. President Hakainde Hichilema, AU Champion on Cholera. This historic gathering of Heads of State and Government marked a turning point in the fight against cholera across the continent. Leaders endorsed a unified Call-to-Action to eliminate cholera in Africa by 2030—anchored in national ownership, local vaccine production, integrated WASH systems, and coordinated continental response. Africa CDC is committed to supporting Member States and partners to turn this political resolve into measurable action, securing Africa's health sovereignty and ending cholera once and for all. Download the Call-to-Action here. Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).
Mail & Guardian
16-05-2025
- Health
- Mail & Guardian
It is high time African states re-asserted their health sovereignty
Some provisions of the WHO's health regulations and draft Pandemic Agreement impinge on the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship. Photo: David Harrison The World Health Organisation (WHO) will convene its 78th World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva from 19 to 27 May. It will be held a year after the 77th WHA voted in favour of amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHRs) on 1 June amid protests from health freedom activists that the amendments were a threat to state sovereignty — the right of a state to conduct its internal affairs without any interference from other state and non-state actors. However, during that WHA, the WHO failed to get member-states to vote in favour of a draft of its Pandemic Agreement, to the delight of health freedom activists who also saw it as a threat to state sovereignty. Many of the activists hold that despite the numerous amendments to the Pandemic Agreement, the draft scheduled for a vote at the 2025 WHA remains a threat to state sovereignty. A key aspect of the internal affairs that a truly sovereign state freely administers is health. However, several pertinent issues have arisen around the question of health sovereignty with regard to amendments to the IHRs and the draft Pandemic Agreement. First, there is the The WHO has developed the International Health Regulations and the draft Pandemic Agreement as instruments to promote global public health. However, some of their provisions impinge on the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship. For instance, they aim to vest health authorities with power to give directions on vaccines, therapies and medical devices during pandemics. This is reminiscent of the situation in the advent of Covid-19, when the WHO discouraged the use of indigenous therapies as well as It is therefore not surprising that both the IHRs and the draft Pandemic agreement seek to establish a worldwide system of medical surveillance, that is, the close monitoring of health events not only in communities, but also in online communication. Such regulations and surveillance not only violate the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship, but also reduce doctors to mere medical clerks, and the ministries of health of various supposedly sovereign states to mere agents of the WHO. Second, the two WHO instruments require states to commit substantial finances to pandemic preparedness and response (PPR). As early as 2022, As a 2024 Third, over the past four decades or so, the proportion of the WHO's The import of this is that the influence of unelected entities over the WHO is increasing while that of the peoples of the world through their elected representatives is dwindling, and this is, in effect, the erosion of state sovereignty in the name of 'public-private partnership'. In the 19th century the peoples of Africa lost their sovereignty when their kings and chiefs signed treaties designed to work against them. Are the present African political office-bearers not repeating the same mistake by signing the numerous 'international legal instruments' similarly designed? Reginald MJ Oduor is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Nairobi, a member of the Pan-African Epidemic and Pandemic Working Group and a member of the International Health Reform Project.
