Zambia’s government will sign an agreement allowing it to receive $1.5 billion in health funding from the United States after resolving \u200bconcerns over Washington’s request for medical data, its health \u200cminister said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year negotiations stalled over Zambia’s concerns over data privacy and a US attempt to tie the funding to access to critical minerals.<\/p>\n
Below \u200bare more comments by Health Minister Roma Chilengi at a \u200bpress conference:<\/p>\n
“The government is pleased to announce that it \u2060will sign the agreement … on Thursday,” Chilengi said<\/p>\n
The minister said the \u200bagreement would see the US provide $1.5 billion in health funding over five \u200byears, while Zambia would spend $2.1 billion<\/p>\n
The US is a major funder of HIV\/AIDS, malaria and public health programmes in the Southern African copper-producing nation<\/p>\n
Zambia and other \u200bAfrican nations have had reservations over requests that they share sweeping \u200bmedical data with the US as a condition to receive funds<\/p>\n
Chilengi said data-sharing \u200cwould \u2060be limited to providing information required to monitor and evaluate US-funded health programmes. A clause had been removed that would have required Zambia to share patient medical specimens with the US if requested<\/p>\n
On whether \u200bthe US funding \u200bwas conditional on \u2060mining access, he said “there is no mention of critical minerals” in the health pact<\/p>\n
Chilengi said he was \u200balso not aware of a separate critical minerals agreement \u200bbeing \u2060negotiated with the US<\/p>\n
African countries including Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda have signed similar US health pacts, which are part of the Trump administration’s changed \u2060approach \u200bto foreign aid under which poorer countries \u200bare meant to transition from aid to self-reliance. Ghana and Zimbabwe rejected deals over data-sharing demands<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zambia’s government will sign an agreement allowing it to receive $1.5 billion in health funding from the United States after resolving \u200bconcerns over Washington’s request for medical data, its health \u200cminister said on Tuesday. Earlier this year negotiations stalled over Zambia’s concerns over data privacy and a US attempt to tie the funding to access […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":12874,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":4,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,2854,30],"tags":[385,5514,394],"class_list":["post-22210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-health","category-southern-africa","tag-united-states","tag-us-health-pact","tag-zambia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22211,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22210\/revisions\/22211"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}