From President’s health call to policy action

When President John Dramani Mahama stood before the high-level One Health Summit in Lyon, France, on Tuesday as its co-chair and delivered a keynote address that was equal parts eloquence and urgency, he was not merely speaking for Ghana.

He was giving voice to a continent that has for too long borne a disproportionate burden of the world's health emergencies while receiving the least of its remedies.

His central message, that humanity must move from commitments to concrete action on the One Health agenda, deserves more than a warm reception in the halls of Lyon's summit. It deserves an honest reckoning at home.

The One Health Summit has gathered global health leaders, Quadripartite organisations and government officials to advance a framework that recognises what should, by now, be obvious: that the health of people, animals, plants and the environment is inseparable.

The science is settled. The frameworks exist. 

What has consistently lagged is the political will to act decisively, invest adequately and coordinate intelligently.

President Mahama was correct to name this gap explicitly.

Despite frequent discussions and high-level summits, progress in building the necessary surveillance infrastructure, cross-sectoral systems, and equitable response capacities has been painfully slow.

This is not merely a matter of resources; it is a matter of priority.

One of the most powerful moments in President Mahama's address was his grounding of One Health not in Western scientific frameworks alone, but in Africa's own intellectual and cultural heritage.

He reminded the Lyon audience that long before One Health was formally defined, African civilisations had developed sophisticated knowledge systems for diagnosing diseases, managing pests, and sustaining agriculture.

This is not nostalgia. It is a necessary corrective to a global health discourse that too often positions Africa as a recipient of solutions rather than a source of them.

The fact that more than half of Africa's population still relies on herbs and natural forest resources for medicine speaks to a deep, enduring relationship between human well-being and environmental health, precisely the relationship that One Health seeks to formalise.

Ghana must take this framing seriously in its own national health policy.

Traditional medicine systems, community health practices, and indigenous ecological knowledge must be integrated, not sidelined, into national health strategies.

President Mahama's reference to Ghana's cocoa sector and illegal mining was pointed and necessary.

Diseases and pests ravaging smallholder cocoa farms are not only an agricultural crisis; they are a One Health crisis, threatening the livelihoods of millions and the biodiversity of forest ecosystems. 

The President Mahama administration has articulated its commitment to fighting illegal mining and protecting Ghana's natural environment.

The Lyon speech provides an important platform to reinforce that commitment internationally.

What matters most, however, is what happens in Accra, Kumasi, Tamale, and the communities where these crises are felt most acutely.

Ghana's implementation of the Ghana Medical Trust Fund and the ongoing push to strengthen primary healthcare are commendable beginnings.

But One Health demands more than strengthened hospitals. It demands an integrated architecture that brings together the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Authority, the Forestry Commission, and local governance structures under a coherent, well-resourced national strategy.
President Mahama's sombre observation that countries most at risk often have the least resources to respond is a truth that global health leaders must stop treating as a lament and start treating as an injustice requiring structural remedy.

The inequity is not incidental; it is baked into the architecture of global health financing, intellectual property regimes, and emergency response systems.

Developed nations that contribute most to climate change, ecosystem degradation and the global drivers of antimicrobial resistance cannot continue to expect developing countries to bear the frontline consequences of crises they did not primarily create.

Ghana and its African partners must press, at Lyon and beyond, for a genuine reconfiguration of global health solidarity, including fair access to diagnostics, vaccines, and financing.

President Mahama closed his address with a three-point call to action: integrate One Health into national and global frameworks; strengthen surveillance and early warning systems; and ensure summit decisions lead to tangible, measurable outcomes.

These are not aspirational fancies; they are minimum conditions for meaningful progress.

The Daily Graphic urges the government to return from Lyon not merely with goodwill and applause, but with firm commitments mapped to deliverables, timelines and budgets. Parliament must be briefed.

Civil society must be engaged. And the public, whose lives are ultimately at stake, must be carried along.

Ghana has a president who understands One Health viscerally, who can articulate the link between a degraded river, a dying cocoa tree, a sick child, and a collapsing household.

The question is whether the institutions of state can translate that understanding into coordinated, sustained policy action.

Let Lyon, as President Mahama urged, be a turning point. But let the real test unfold here at home.