About MeTA

One person in three – two billion people – lacks access to essential medicines. Millions die every year from HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, pneumonia, measles, diarrhoea, heart disease and stroke. Yet medicines exist for nearly all these problems. The Medicines Transparency Alliance (MeTA), launched in London in May 2008, aims to help people get the medicines they need.  Its chosen tools are information and accountability.

In each of seven pilot countries – Ghana, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Peru, the Philippines, Uganda and Zambia – representatives of government, private sector and civil society are looking at every link in the medicines supply chain, from manufacturer to patient.

What makes this scrutiny so potentially powerful is that it stems not from a single perspective, but from a wide range of interests: government, manufacturers, traders, health workers, academics, non-governmental activists, journalists.

A second key factor is that MeTA’s national forums are not simply generating and uncovering data and other information but are committed to making it public and encouraging people and organisations to act on it and producing policies which make that possible.

Ultimately, the aim is to improve access to medicines for poor people.

What is MeTA?

• An alliance internationally to promote dialogue and support change
• Alliances within pilot countries to focus on what can be done to increase access to quality medicines
• Support to pilot countries from the International Secretariat – funds to support country work, and, on request, technical assistance.

The Medicines Transparency was Alliance launched on 15-16 May 2008, at Lancaster House in London.

• MeTA launch Q&A

Launch highlights

• Executive Summary
• Speech by Douglas Alexander, UK Secretary of State for International Development
• Highlights from MeTa Stakeholders panel
• Highlights from country presentations
• List of Participants
• Launch Presentations
• DFID press release

For MeTA’s launch, four independent journalists in pilot countries were commissioned to look at some of the issues that MeTA will tackle. Read their stories below:

• Encouraging quality medicines in Ghana
• Dealing with high medicine prices in Peru
• Widening access to HIV/AIDS drugs in Uganda
• Getting medicines to the poor in Zambia

MeTA launch at World Health Organization Assembly, Geneva, 21 May 2008
Click on the links below to see the presentations made at this event:

• The Medicines Transparency Alliance: Making a Difference to People’s Health
• Medicines Transparency Alliance: helping markets work for the poor
• Good Governance for Medicines Programme: the Thai Experience
• WHO Good Governance for Medicines programme
• MeTA Philippines: Sharing Responsibility, Achieving as One