E-DRUG: Following up on Medicines Transparency Alliance (MeTA) (2)
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Dear e-Druggers,
Bonnie, thank you for the opportunity to flag the work of MeTA country partners.
Health Action International (HAI) was, of course, one-half of the secretariat that guided MeTA between 2011 and 2015, along with the essential medicines department at the World Health Organization.
You are right, in principle, that the MeTA model was loosely based on EITI and that transparent dialogue between stakeholders was at its core. In some countries, the focus was indeed on publishing pricing data, but in others it was about transparency of (un)ethical pharmaceutical promotion, supply chain inadequacies, overarching medicines policy and so on. But key to its success was country ownership, so agendas were broadly set at the country level.
In some countries, MeTA has been stunningly successful, for it brought together representation from private, public and civil society sectors in a dialogue space that, in itself, was innovative, transparent and conducive to frank and open dialogue. It formed what Kingdon (2014) calls a ‘cohesive policy community'. One such example is the Kyrgyz Republic, where MeTA was charged to drive the development and writing of the national medicines policy.
MeTA received a very positive external review, conducted in 2015
(http://haiweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Medicines-Transparency-Alliance-MeTA-Evaluation.pdf),
which concluded that the MeTA model made a positive contribution to policy outcomes.
HAI has a paper, currently under review, on the extent of truly multi-stakeholder agenda setting and why, in some countries, it was successful, while in others, it lacked the oxygen for proper engagement and, in one, was somewhat suffocated.
As far as ongoing MeTA branding is concerned, as with most programmes, neither the secretariat (or anyone else for that matter) did not have rights over the name; merely global ownership for the duration of the programme. Some countries in the programme registered MeTA as a legal entity, in part, to operate legally and to secure funds. I know at least one new country has started a MeTA project, but whether it calls itself MeTA is unclear. For the countries that were in the original clutch of 'MeTA Countries', global support has not really ended, it is just unfunded. Where possible, HAI continues to contribute and support the MeTA networks.
One such fully-funded programme of work that employs the MeTA model is under the umbrella of the recently launched Health Systems Advocacy Partnership, between Amref, Achest, HAI and Wemos. The main objective of this five-year project is the attainment of sexual and reproductive health and rights. HAI’s contribution, naturally enough, is access to sexual and reproductive health commodities (SRHC). The project currently runs in Kenya, Uganda and Zambia, with Kenya in start-up phase and the latter two countries being original MeTA partners.
HAI will continue to support MeTA as a model to transparently interrogate access to medicines, albeit with a different accent because, before, the focus was simply essential medicines, whereas, now, the focus will be more specific - SRHC.
I’d be interested to know what other countries you may have heard of that might be starting a MeTA initiative.
Best regards,
Tim Reed
Executive Director, Health Action International
per Bobbi Klettke <bobbi@haiweb.org>