Amman, August 31, 2026
Health sector expertsand specialists have called for improving the governance of Jordan’s healthcaresystem and strengthening integration and coordination among the variousinstitutions and entities responsible for managing and delivering health services.They said this would improve the efficiency of health spending and ensure thatpatients have timely access to the medicines and services they need, at therequired quality.
The call was madeduring a conference to launch the policy paper “Towards a Patient-CenteredPharmaceutical System in Jordan: From Medicine Availability to Ensuring Access”,prepared by the Phenix Center for Sustainable Development, with theparticipation of policymakers, experts, representatives of governmentinstitutions, civil society organizations, and the health sector.
The panel discussionbrought together Senator and former Director General of the Jordan Food andDrug Administration (JFDA) Dr. Hayel Obaidat; Member of the House ofRepresentatives Dr. Shaher Al-Shatnawi; healthcare expert and formerSecretary-General of the Ministry of Health Dr. Abdulrahman Al-Maani; andMember of the Jordan Medical Association Council Dr. Mohammad Al-Tarawneh.
In his opening remarks,Phenix Center Director Ahmad Awad said ensuring that patients have access tomedicines of the required quality and quantity, at the right time, is afundamental component of the right to health and the continuity of treatment.
He noted that Jordanhas a relatively advanced pharmaceutical system, but the key challenge lies inbridging the gap between the availability of medicines within the system andpatients’ actual access to them. This, he said, requires the development of anintegrated management approach centered on patients’ needs.
The speakers emphasizedthat Jordan has an advanced healthcare system compared with many countries inthe region, supported by an extensive institutional, medical, andpharmaceutical infrastructure that includes the public health sector, RoyalMedical Services, university hospitals, and the private sector, in addition toa developed domestic pharmaceutical industry and specialized institutionsresponsible for regulation, oversight, procurement, and supply.
They noted that Jordanspends approximately 9 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on healthacross various sectors. While this represents a relatively high level ofspending, the outcomes achieved in terms of service efficiency and quality, aswell as ease of access, remain below what would be expected from the substantialresources allocated to the sector.
Participants explainedthat the challenge is not simply the size of health spending, but also theefficiency with which resources are allocated and managed. They pointed togovernance gaps within the health system that affect its ability to achieve thedesired outcomes. These include the multiplicity of entities leading andmanaging different components of the health system, the existence of multipledecision-making centers, and limited coordination, integration, and information-sharingamong healthcare providers.
They stressed that thisfragmentation can, in some cases, lead to duplication of services and spendingand the inefficient use of available resources, limiting the ability to buildan integrated health system centered on patients’ needs.
They also emphasizedthe need to develop more effective coordination mechanisms among the differentcomponents of the health sector and to link planning, financing, and servicedelivery within an integrated national vision.
The speakers consideredthe pharmaceutical system an essential component of the healthcare systemrather than a separate sector. They said the success of the health systemshould not be assessed solely by the number of hospitals and health centers,the size of budgets, or the volume of medicine stocks. Ultimately, it should bemeasured by citizens’ ability to obtain the appropriate healthcare andmedicines, at the right time and in the right place.
In this context, thepolicy paper showed that the central issue in access to medicines is notnecessarily the existence of a nationwide shortage, but rather a potential gapbetween the availability of medicines within the system and patients’ actualability to obtain them at the point of service delivery. A medicine may beavailable in central warehouses or covered by a procurement contract, while ahealth center may experience a temporary shortage, or a patient may receiveonly part of their prescription.
The paper called formoving beyond viewing medicines through the simple binary of “available orunavailable” and adopting more precise indicators that measure theproportion of prescriptions dispensed in full, the number of days medicines areout of stock at each health facility, the speed of replenishment, cases of partialdispensing, and the number of times patients are forced to return to a healthcenter or purchase medicines from the private sector.
Participants alsostressed the importance of restoring the role of primary healthcare, notingthat public confidence in health centers has declined in recent years in favorof seeking care directly from hospitals. This has increased pressure and costsat higher levels of care and resulted in hospitals providing services thatcould be handled more efficiently and at a lower cost through primaryhealthcare.
They called forrebuilding public trust in health centers by expanding the scope and improvingthe quality of services they provide, while ensuring the availability of thenecessary staff, medical specialties, medicines, and diagnostic tests. Theyalso called for strengthening the role of comprehensive health centers so thatthey can function more like “mini-hospitals,” capable of handling agreater proportion of health conditions—particularly chronic andnon-communicable diseases—without referring patients to hospitals unlessnecessary.
They noted thatstrengthening comprehensive health centers would help ease the heavy pressureon hospitals, reduce waiting times and transportation costs for patients, andimprove geographic equity in access to healthcare services, particularly ingovernorates and areas located far from major hospitals.
For its part, thepolicy paper recommended developing a national “pharmaceutical demandintelligence” system, so that estimates of medicine needs are not basedsolely on quantities dispensed in the past, but also take into account thenumber of patients, disease burden, demographic changes, unmet demand, and themovement of patients between different healthcare providers.
It also called for usingelectronic inventory systems as an early-warning tool for medicines at risk ofrunning out, facilitating the redistribution of stocks among health facilities,linking procurement policies to supplier performance and continuity of supply,protecting the continuity of treatment for chronic diseases, and strengtheningcommunication with patients regarding generic medicines and therapeuticalternatives.
At the conclusion ofthe conference, participants stressed that improving access to medicines doesnot necessarily require establishing new institutions, but rather improving thegovernance and integration of existing institutions, enhancing the efficiencyof resource use, and placing patients and their health outcomes at the centerof planning and evaluation. This, they said, would ensure that the value ofhealth spending is directly linked to the services, treatment, and medicinesthat citizens actually receive.