President John Dramani Mahama has issued a forceful call for the world to move beyond declarations and deliver concrete action on the interconnected crises threatening human health, food systems, and ecosystems, warning that the countries bearing the heaviest burden have the fewest resources to respond.
Speaking on April 7 at the 2026 One Health Summit in Lyon, France, which he co-chaired alongside French President Emmanuel Macron, Mahama delivered two keynote addresses that placed Africa’s environmental and health vulnerabilities at the centre of the global agenda.
“The period of declarations must come to an end,” he told assembled world leaders, policymakers, and health experts. “Let us move from commitments to action. Let us ensure that the decisions we take here lead to tangible, measurable outcomes that protect both people and the planet.”
The President identified climate change as the underlying force driving the convergence of health threats. He described a world in which infectious disease outbreaks, antimicrobial resistance, and food system disruptions were intensifying with growing frequency. “At the foundation of all these crises is the phenomenon of climate change. Everything is interconnected,” he said.
Drawing directly on Ghana’s experience, Mahama cited illegal gold mining as a concrete example of how ecological damage feeds health and economic decline. He noted that illegal mining was degrading forests and polluting water bodies, threatening biodiversity and public safety, while diseases and pests were simultaneously striking smallholder cocoa farmers and endangering millions of livelihoods. He also raised the growing threat of plastic pollution, calling for stronger coordinated international action to address it.
On global inequality in health preparedness, Mahama was direct. “The countries that are most at risk have the least resources to cope. This must change,” he said, calling for equitable access to financing, technology, and innovation. He argued that building a healthier and more resilient Africa would serve not only the continent but global stability as well.
The President made a strong case for prevention-led health architecture, describing early intervention as both more effective and more cost-efficient than reactive responses. He urged governments to integrate the One Health framework into national policy design, linking human, animal, and environmental health as a single system.
The One Health framework is championed by a quadripartite partnership of four major international bodies: the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the World Health Organisation (WHO), and the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH). The 2026 summit, hosted by France under its Group of Seven (G7) presidency, was the first to bring together heads of state alongside private sector leaders, civil society, academia, and international organisations.
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said the summit marked a decisive shift in the continent’s role in global health governance, crediting the coordinated presence of African leaders, including Mahama, for ensuring that Africa’s health security priorities were advanced rather than merely represented.
