Kenya on Thursday signed a $2.5 billion health deal with the US, the first with President Donald Trump’s administration, which potentially replaces the funding lost after the US Agency for International Development (USAid) folded.

The five-year agreement, signed between the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Kenya’s Prime Cabinet Secretary and Foreign CS Musalia Mudavadi, comes in place of a patchwork of health agreements traditionally run by the USAid for decades until the Trump administration dismantled it earlier this year.

Kenya becomes the first African country to sign the US Health MoUs earning $1.6 billion over the next five years in exchange for health care data and specimens for the next 25 years. Kenya will cover the remaining amount.

The agreement focuses on preventing and treating diseases such as HIV/Aids, malaria and tuberculosis, with an emphasis on faith-based medical providers, although all clinics and hospitals enrolled in Kenya’s health insurance system will be eligible to receive funding, according to US officials.

Secretary Rubio said the agreement “aims to strengthen US leadership and excellence in global health while eliminating dependency, ideology, inefficiency, and waste from our foreign assistance architecture.”The end of USAid has had repercussions across Africa, shutting down programmes that fought diseases and hunger and supported maternal health, and stemmed extremism. They also promoted democracy. The end of USAid put thousands of health workers out of jobs.

Experts warned up that sub-Saharan Africa’s battle against HIV might be affected after the closing of USAid affected the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar), a bipartisan programme launched by the administration of George W. Bush in 2003, and which is credited with saving around 25 million lives across the globe.

With Kenya’s Health ministry silent on the sharing of crucial data, experts say the US-Kenya deal represents a major increase in US mass surveillance capabilities.“It will allow the US to see the name and location of everyone who uses a Kenyan healthcare facility in real-time – and get a copy of their biometrics,” said Kyle Spencer, executive director of Uganda Internet Exchange Point.

Legal experts argue that the deal is in breach of Article 31 of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010, which provides for the right to privacy. The Data Protection Act, 2019 regulates the processing of personal data and provides for rights of data subjects and obligations for data controllers and processors. Granting the US access could violate those provisions.

But others argue that an MoU is non-binding and can’t override the Constitution. They said that even the Pepfar doesn’t get real-time access to national health records -- only receiving aggregated, anonymised data.“USAid operated more like an NGO and both as a funder and an implement through partners- government agencies departments, NGOs, CBOs and so on. This one bestows receiving the funds and implementing them from the government. It means accounting to USAid, who then accounted to the government of the US. With this one, the government of Kenya will account directly to the government of the US,” said Dr Kizito Sabala, a lecturer in at the University of Nairobi’s School of Diplomacy.“On the issue of breach to data, I think Kenya needs to incorporate the issue in our data protection law in the MoU or its addendum.”But Prof Peter Kagwanja, president of the Africa Policy Institute and adjunct professor at the University of Nairobi, said the deal smacks of neocolonialism.“This is where the US is hurting by not supporting Africa because it needs to supply medicine to us. It’s neocolonial but it’s going only to aid corruption,” Prof Kagwanja said.

The $1.6 billion will support priority health programmes, including maternal and child health, polio eradication, disease surveillance, and infectious disease outbreak response and preparedness.

President William Ruto said his government was already expanding essential health services and increasing domestic health financing through the Social Health Authority (SHA).“Kenyan and US commitments in the framework are thus fully aligned and mutually beneficial,” he said.

The pact is a tool under the America-First Global Health Strategy which, according to the US government, “outlines a comprehensive vision to make America safer, stronger and more prosperous. It will protect the homeland by preventing infectious disease outbreaks from reaching US shores.”

© Copyright 2022 Nation Media Group. All Rights Reserved. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info).