The US State Department has disclosed that the $2 billion agreement between Nigeria and the United States includes plans to monitor data and increase health surveillance to enable prompt response to disease outbreaks, reports The Cable.
According to TheCable, details of the pact in the America First Global Health Strategy document, an MoU signed with at least 20 African countries including Nigeria.
While the individual country agreements have not been made public, the broader document offers insight into the expectations placed on participating countries.
The deal, which will run over a five-year period, from April 2026 to December 2030, was inked between Nigeria and the US last December.
Under the pact, the US government will provide almost $2 billion in grant funding, while Nigeria will mobilise nearly $3 billion for health sector development within the same timeframe.
At the time, emphasis was placed on the funding being a support mechanism for Christian faith-based healthcare providers, but concerns later emerged over potential encroachments on the country’s health sovereignty.
In the health strategy document, the US said it will partner with recipient countries to develop a streamlined and robust performance monitoring system that at a minimum will be able to monitor data in four areas: service delivery, epidemiology, supply chain, and co-investment.
Nigeria’s ministry of health noted that both countries intend to negotiate a “regulated data-sharing arrangement to exchange information on the long-term performance of the MoU, in compliance with applicable laws governing data protection, privacy, ownership, access rights, and hosting requirements”.
The ministry did not provide details on what kind of data would be shared.
An earlier circulating version of the MoU included stronger language on direct access to national databases and also made several references to the sharing of pathogens and pathogen sequence data with the US for 25 years.
The US can then share the specimen and data with up to ten “non-U.S. Government U.S. entities” with the capability to develop diagnostics or other medical countermeasures.
The requirement was said to be contained in the agreements with Nigeria, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Mozambique.
If countries fail to provide these resources, they could lose all funding included in the agreement.
