Facilitating change: Jordan's experience of MeTA

Posted on 21 September 2009

By Dr Taher Abu Al Samen, Chair of the Jordan MeTA Council

MeTA is the first project of its kind in Jordan, for two main reasons. Firstly - because this time the donors have handed over the authority to us in country. We have the freedom to identify our own priorities, to create a workplan and agree activities. This is excellent as it means that the project will fit the needs of the country. Secondly, and most importantly, it is unique because a group of stakeholders who previously worked separately from one other are now casting aside differences and collaborating to make essential medicines more accessible to people in Jordan.

The main point to make about our multi-stakeholder group in Jordan is that we are now facilitators of a much larger process. We are working as a team and when we come together, whether we are from government, pharmaceutical companies or civil society organisations, we leave our organisations and our representational roles behind. We are starting to focus on ways in which we can each engage with whole process of supplying medicines to the population of Jordan.

Within the council this involves lots of dialogue and debate. All the members of the council have strong views, strong representational roles and strong agendas. At the beginning stakeholders were suspicious of MeTA, whether involvement in the council would compromise them or their organisations in any way. When we started working together it became clear that this would not be the case. We are now reaching the stage where the members are setting aside these views, roles and agendas in order to focus on where there can be common areas of interest. We are pooling our experience, our knowledge, our skills and this enriches the implementation of the project. Each stakeholder needs to be a champion of the process. Each stakeholder needs to act as a facilitator within their own organisation and own networks to champion the work of MeTA, and the goal of increased transparency and accountability in the medicines supply chain.

This position for MeTA stakeholders in Jordan is new. We have never before tried to put aside our particular interest in order to reach the common goal of making medicines more accessible, more affordable and of high quality to the people of Jordan. Without MeTA this would not be happening.