GLOBAL health leaders meeting in Geneva have intensified calls for a shift from donor-driven health funding and programming towards country-led financing and delivery systems. The push dominated the Accra Reset High-Level Dialogue on Global Health Architecture, held on the margins of the 79th World Health Assembly (WHA79), where more than 250 heads of state, ministers, and global health leaders gathered to debate the future of global health governance.A statement released after the event on Monday, May 25, said discussions focused strongly on the Accra Reset initiative, launched in 2025 by Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama, which aims to reshape global health around country sovereignty, domestic resource mobilisation, and stronger national control of priorities and implementation.
Mahama told participants at the event that global health reform must move beyond fragmented donor coordination towards systems where countries define and execute their own health agendas.He described health as “the vanguard, the proof of concept, and the moral imperative” for broader development reform.
The initiative, according to the statement, proposes new mechanisms, including a Reform Observatory and a financing gateway platform, aimed at channeling investment into country-designed programmes rather than externally structured interventions.“If the Accra Reset can move health commitments into working programmes, it can do so for any sector,” said President Mahama. “Health is the vanguard, the proof of concept, and the moral imperative.” The statement noted that several Ministers from Indonesia, Brazil, Kenya, and Ghana backed the proposal, arguing that sovereignty must translate into real control over health financing and delivery rather than symbolic policy shifts.
