\n<\/p>\n
ghana<\/a> The government has rejected a proposed health deal with the United States over provisions that would have allowed American entities to access the country’s sensitive health data without necessary safeguards, an official told The Associated Press on Friday. It was the latest African country to withdraw from the agreement due to similar concerns.<\/p>\n Arnold Kawarpuo, executive director of Ghana’s Data Protection Commission, said the scope of the requested data access “far exceeds the purpose for which it is sought.”<\/p>\n The US State Department did not immediately respond to an AP inquiry about the Ghanaian official’s comments.<\/p>\n America has attacked such health deals<\/a> along with nearly two dozen African countries under the Trump administration’s “America First” approach to global health financing. The new approach that began late last year<\/a> Replaces the patchwork of previous health agreements under the now-defunct United States Agency for International Development.<\/p>\n The deals offer hundreds of millions of dollars in US funding to some of the countries hardest hit by US aid cuts to support their public health systems and help fight disease outbreaks.<\/p>\n However these agreements have raised questions over data privacy concerns. In February, officials in Zimbabwe said they Proposed deal rejected<\/a> On issues related to health data, fairness and sovereignty. It has also been reported that Zambia has pushed back part of the deal, although no decision has been made there.<\/p>\n Activists in Africa say agreements often lack adequate safeguards for the use of such data and are sometimes limited, such as in Nigeria where the US has committed to supporting predominantly Christian faith-based healthcare providers.<\/p>\n Jean Cassia, director general of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also cited “huge concerns” regarding data and pathogen sharing in comments to journalists about the deals.<\/p>\n Under the proposed agreement worth approximately $300 million, Kawarpuo said Ghana would receive approximately $109 million in US funding over five years with supplemental investment coming from the Government of Ghana.<\/p>\n Kawarpuo, whose agency was directly involved in the negotiations, cited a caveat where sensitive health data could identify individuals deemed necessary.<\/p>\n “In effect, it was to outsource the country’s health data architecture to a foreign body,” he said. \u201cThe proposed data sharing agreement focuses on access not only to health data sets, but also to metadata, dashboards, reporting tools, data models, and data dictionaries.\u201d<\/p>\n He said the proposals would allow 10 US entities access to such data without requiring prior approval from Ghana to access the data.<\/p>\n “We didn’t understand that Ghana had any real governance oversight when it came to how the data would be used. It was more or less that if they did an exercise, they would notify the country. So it was not a prior approval arrangement,” he said.<\/p>\n Kawarpuo said Ghana had informed the US of its decision to reject the offer and sought better conditions for a better deal.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2014<\/p>\n For more on Africa and development: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/africa-palse<\/a><\/p>\n The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. AP is solely responsible for all content. find api standards<\/a> A list of philanthropies to work with, supporters and funded coverage areas ap.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ghana The government has rejected a proposed health deal with the United States over provisions that would have allowed American entities to access the country’s sensitive health data without necessary safeguards, an official told The Associated Press on Friday. It was the latest African country to withdraw from the agreement due to similar concerns. Arnold<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[3506,520,1570,7059,667,2621,5000],"class_list":{"0":"post-114566","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bible-news","8":"tag-african","9":"tag-country","10":"tag-deal","11":"tag-ghana","12":"tag-health","13":"tag-latest","14":"tag-reject"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114566"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114567,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114566\/revisions\/114567"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}