MeTA Jordan at the World Health Assembly, Geneva

Posted on 22 May 2009

MeTA Jordan held an important session on medicines and transparency at the World Health Assembly(WHA), Geneva, on Tuesday 19th May. Over 70 participants from the WHA attended with representatives from over 20 different countries including Ghana, Cameroon, Peru, Argentina, India, and Bangladesh.

Members of the MeTA Jordan Council presented the work they have done so far in setting up a multi-stakeholder group comprising representatives from Government, the pharmaceutical industry, and civil society organisations.

Dr Taher Abu Al Samen, Chair of the MeTA Council & Secretary General, High Health Council presented the progress made by all the stakeholders participating in MeTA Jordan. The MeTA Jordan Council developed a workplan with a framework for integrating all the players in the Jordan pharmaceutical sector. The framework is based on the structure of the National Drug Policy (NDP) 2002 document. The workplan consists of three elements: collecting base line data, building capacity and setting up committees to work in the three key areas of evidence based medicines, rational drug use, and civil society organisation. However, the work is not without its challenges. “We need to assure the commitment and engagement of all stakeholders and we need to make sure there is clarity and understanding of MeTA’s objectives at all levels in the organisations on the MeTA Jordan Council,” he said. Dr Taher noted that there is resistance to change, but he remains optimistic about what MeTA can achieve in Jordan with the full support of the Government, private sector, civil society organisations and international partners.

Brian Elliott, Executive Director of MeTA gave an overview of MeTA internationally and work in the seven countries involved in the pilot phase - Ghana, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Peru, the Philippines, Uganda and Zambia. He applauded the progress made so far by Jordan and the other MeTA countries and said that the challenges they now face to increase transparency in the medicines supply chain include extracting the right information and dealing with the lack of tools to systematically manage the information.

Hans Hogerzeil, Director Essential Medicines at the World Health Organization, a key partner in MeTA, said that WHO supports MeTA because it promotes equitable access to medicines, promotes health systems in a comprehensive manner, and is a very innovative way to promote transparency. “The abstract right to health is being translated into reality in this very concrete programme,” he said.

In Jordan, a WHO programme, Good Governance for Medicines (GGM) has been operating since 2007. Guitelle Baghdadi-Sabeti of WHO and Professor Mohammed Rawashdeh of the Jordan Food and Drug Administration, highlighted how the two programmes, GGM and MeTA, are complementing each other in Jordan and discussed some key issues around transparency in the medicines industry.

WHA Briefing note

MeTA in Jordan

Medicines Transparency and Good Governance for Medicines in Jordan

How different stakeholders see MeTA

MeTA Jordan will launch MeTA officially on 31 May in Amman.