Human Rights Watch has warned in a recent report that America’s bilateral health pacts with African countries – and its condition that the US will gain access to lifesaving global health aid – “jeopardise human rights” and could require abortion surveillance and undermine patient privacy, reports The Independent.
The rights groups said the agreements with seven African countries will allow Washington to access surveillance data and allow extractive rights to samples for pharmaceutical development.
Senior HRW health researcher Julia Bleckner said Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Liberia and Uganda were being squeezed to accept agreements that “condition vital health assistance for millions of people on acquiescence to troubling conditions”.
The governments negotiating the agreements faced difficult choices, she added. “After the sudden and devastating pullback from US assistance in 2025, they are now being pressured to accept agreements with contingencies that jeopardise human rights.”
The US Government has not publicly disclosed details of the 31 agreements signed with other governments overall.
The agreements were negotiated after the dismantling of USAID. They require countries to grant the US surveillance access to their health systems, while some allow unannounced inspections of health facilities to make sure they comply with the Helms Amendment, a US law that effectively bans US foreign assistance funding from supporting abortion services.
Bleckner said the countries “should be wary of terms asking them to sign away their populations’ rights and push for the inclusion of civil society representative and multilateral health organisations like the Global Fund in deliberations”.
Experts say the overall aid cuts, and the disruption to support networks, have hampered efforts to save lives amid the current Ebola outbreak.
Confirmed cases have hit almost 600 across three provinces in the Democratic Republic of Congo, having also spread to Uganda.
UK Development Minister Jenny Chapman admitted last week that the response to the cases had been undermined by foreign aid cuts.
The cuts have also been linked to a significant increase in violence across several African nations and nearly 23m additional deaths are expected by 2030 as a result of the global pullback on aid. A study published in The Lancet found that the extra deaths from cuts to aid programmes in 93 countries – including 38 in Sub-Saharan Africa – could include 5.4m children under five.
A US State Department spokesperson previously told The Independent that the focus for the department is on implementing lifesaving care in global health priority areas, including through new, landmark bilateral global health Memoranda of Understanding (MOU).
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