Zambia signs $1.5 billion health agreement with the US — BBC News
Zambia signed a five-year agreement with the United States in Lusaka to fund its healthcare system. Under the memorandum concluded on Thursday alongside a data-sharing arrangement, the United States will provide about $1.5 billion, while Zambia will also contribute to the funding, BBC News reports.
Terms of data sharing
According to officials, the revised text of the agreement takes into account concerns regarding privacy, intellectual property and benefit-sharing. Zambia’s Health Minister Roma Chilengi said provisions requiring the country to send biological samples to the United States were removed from the document. According to him, the agreement also does not provide for the transfer of patients’ individual medical records.
According to the minister, information sharing will be limited to data needed to monitor and evaluate programmes funded under the agreement. Previously, civil society organisations criticised a leaked draft of the document, arguing that it allowed excessively broad data sharing, including long-term access to pathogen information and samples.
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Disputes over aid
The human rights organisation Chapter One Foundation warned that the government risked handing over citizens’ health data. HIV activists, including the Treatment Advocacy and Literacy Campaign, called for the agreement’s text to be made public and expressed concern that the flow of information would be one-sided.
Activists and opposition politicians also pointed to reports of a possible link between health funding and preferential access for US companies to Zambia’s reserves of copper and other critical minerals. In May, Foreign Minister Mulambo Haimbe described the data conditions as a violation of privacy and accused Washington of tying the package to minerals. Then-US Ambassador Michael Gonzales dismissed the claim as false.
The funds are to be used for programmes to combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, maternal and child healthcare, epidemiological surveillance, healthcare system development, and the hiring of community health workers. Officials estimated the total size of the 2026–2030 package at about $3.6 billion, although figures for Zambia’s contribution differed. The United States expects its funding to gradually decline while Zambia’s domestic spending increases.
