Ghana has rejected a proposed health deal with the U.S. over provisions that would have allowed U.S. entities access to the nation’s sensitive health data without necessary safeguards, an official told The Associated Press on Friday. It was the latest African country to walk away from the deal over similar concerns.
Arnold Kavaarpuo, executive director of Ghana’s Data Protection Commission, said the scope of data access requested “went far beyond what would typically be required for the purpose for which it’s stated.”
The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to AP’s inquiry about the Ghanaian official’s comments.
The U.S. has struck such health deals with nearly two dozen African nations under the Trump administration’s “America First” approach to global health funding. The new approach that kicked off late last year replaces a patchwork of previous health agreements under the now-dismantled United States Agency for International Development.
The deals offer hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. funding to some of the countries worst hit by the U.S. aid cuts to support their public health systems and help fight disease outbreaks.
The agreements though have raised questions about data privacy concerns. In February, authorities in Zimbabwe said they rejected the proposed deal over issues around health data, fairness and sovereignty. Zambia is also reported to have pushed back on a section of the deal, although no decision has been made there.
Activists in Africa say the agreements often lack adequate safeguards for use of such data and are sometimes limiting, such as in Nigeria where the U.S. committed to supporting mainly Christian faith-based healthcare providers.
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention Director General Jean Kaseya had also cited “huge concerns” regarding data and pathogen sharing in comments to reporters about the deals.
Ghana says no prior approval for data use
Under the proposed agreement worth around $300 million, Kavaarpuo said Ghana would have received about $109 million in U.S. funding over five years with supplemental investments coming from the Ghanaian government.
Kavaarpuo, whose agency was directly involved in the talks, cited one caveat where individuals could be identified as deemed necessary for sensitive health data.
“That, in effect, was outsourcing the health data architecture of the country to a foreign body,” he said. “The proposed data sharing agreement looked at access not only to health data sets, but also to metadata, dashboards, reporting tools, data models and data dictionaries.”
The proposals would have also allowed up to 10 U.S. entities access to such data with no prior approval needed from Ghana for whatever the data is needed for, he said.
“We did not get a sense that Ghana had any real governance oversight when it came to how the data was going to be utilized. It was more or less if they undertook an exercise, they will notify the country. So it was not a prior approval arrangement,” he said.
Kavaarpuo said Ghana has communicated its decision to reject the proposal to the U.S. and sought improved conditions for a better deal.
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