BRASILIA, Sept. 8, 2026 — In a virtual gathering of senior health and regional governance officials from across the Amazon basin, Guyana has formally assumed the pro tempore presidency of the Special Commission on Health in the Amazon (CESAM), taking over the rotational leadership role from Ecuador to steer the body’s next phase of collaborative work tackling shared public health challenges across the region.
The leadership handover concluded the 8th extraordinary meeting of CESAM, an event organized under the framework of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO), which brought together official representatives from all ACTO member states to review outgoing Ecuador’s achievements and lay out priorities for the incoming tenure.
In his first address after assuming the presidency, Guyana’s Minister of Health Dr. Frank Anthony extended formal gratitude to Ecuador for its foundational work over the past term, underscoring that interconnected health threats facing Amazonian nations can only be addressed through coordinated cross-border collaboration, open exchange of evidence and experiences, and strategic leveraging of existing regional capacities.
Dr. Anthony outlined that the top immediate priority for Guyana’s leadership will be to fully operationalize CESAM’s three newly established permanent sub-commissions, securing active participation from all member countries to advance their respective work agendas. The three sub-bodies focus on distinct critical priority areas: Digital Health, Environment and Gender Equity; Priority and Emerging Diseases; and Intercultural Health and Traditional Medicine.
Building on existing regional progress, Dr. Anthony highlighted Suriname’s successful experience eliminating malaria as a replicable model for cross-border partnership, noting that Guyana will prioritize expanding coordinated efforts to curb and ultimately eliminate the disease across the Amazon. Beyond advancing the existing CESAM work plan, Guyana also intends to develop and present new targeted initiatives for member state consideration during its tenure.
A key agenda item during the extraordinary meeting was the ongoing development of a dedicated health module for the Amazon Regional Observatory (ARO), a regional data infrastructure designed to support evidence-based health decision-making across member states. Attendees approved a formal roadmap for the project, which tasks CESAM with defining clear criteria and protocols for secure cross-border health information sharing and access, while requiring individual member states to appoint technical focal points to drive implementation forward.
In a move to accelerate progress, Guyana has proposed holding an in-person CESAM meeting on the sidelines of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Directing Council session scheduled for late September, creating a timely opportunity to advance discussions on the work plan and next steps for the commission.
In addition to Dr. Anthony, the meeting included participation from senior Ecuadorian health officials led by María José Mena, Undersecretary for Health Surveillance, Prevention and Control at Ecuador’s Ministry of Public Health, as well as Edith Paredes, Administrative Director of the ACTO Permanent Secretariat.
The session opened with a comprehensive review of Ecuador’s outgoing pro tempore presidency, which delivered a series of landmark institutional milestones. Under Ecuador’s leadership, CESAM completed the reactivation and consolidation of the commission’s institutional structure, approved a full organizational work plan, and formally established the three permanent sub-commissions that Guyana will now bring into full operation. Additional achievements included advancing negotiations on a regional Strategic Plan for Comprehensive Health in the Amazon, accelerating coordinated action to address communicable diseases particularly malaria elimination, and developing the initial proposal for the ARO health module to strengthen regional health data governance.
Paredes commended Ecuador’s transformative work during its tenure, emphasizing that continuity of commitment to the regional health agenda is critical to delivering tangible outcomes for Amazonian communities. She noted that the unique geographic and epidemiological context of the Amazon — marked by vast remote distances, limited access to health services, climate change impacts, growing risks from emerging and re-emerging diseases, and the distinct health needs of Indigenous Peoples and traditional local communities — demands unified, coordinated action from all member nations rather than isolated national efforts.
Paredes added that Guyana inherits a fully functional CESAM with a solid institutional foundation built over the previous tenure, providing a strong platform for further progress. The core challenge moving forward, she noted, will be to preserve the momentum gained over recent years, deepen the work of the newly established sub-commissions, and translate institutional progress into concrete health improvements for the populations living across the Amazon region.