31-08-2026
Amman, August 31, 2026
Health sector experts and specialists have called for improving the governance of Jordan’s healthcare system and strengthening integration and coordination among the various institutions and entities responsible for managing and delivering health services. They said this would improve the efficiency of health spending and ensure that patients have timely access to the medicines and services they need, at the required quality.
The call was made during a conference to launch the policy paper “Towards a Patient-Centered Pharmaceutical System in Jordan: From Medicine Availability to Ensuring Access”, prepared by the Phenix Center for Sustainable Development, with the participation of policymakers, experts, representatives of government institutions, civil society organizations, and the health sector.
The panel discussion brought together Senator and former Director General of the Jordan Food and Drug Administration (JFDA) Dr. Hayel Obaidat; Member of the House of Representatives Dr. Shaher Al-Shatnawi; healthcare expert and former Secretary-General of the Ministry of Health Dr. Abdulrahman Al-Maani; and Member 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 to medicines of the required quality and quantity, at the right time, is a fundamental component of the right to health and the continuity of treatment.
He noted that Jordan has a relatively advanced pharmaceutical system, but the key challenge lies in bridging the gap between the availability of medicines within the system and patients’ actual access to them. This, he said, requires the development of an integrated management approach centered on patients’ needs.
The speakers emphasized that Jordan has an advanced healthcare system compared with many countries in the region, supported by an extensive institutional, medical, and pharmaceutical infrastructure that includes the public health sector, Royal Medical Services, university hospitals, and the private sector, in addition to a developed domestic pharmaceutical industry and specialized institutions responsible for regulation, oversight, procurement, and supply.
They noted that Jordan spends approximately 9 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health across various sectors. While this represents a relatively high level of spending, the outcomes achieved in terms of service efficiency and quality, as well as ease of access, remain below what would be expected from the substantial resources allocated to the sector.
Participants explained that the challenge is not simply the size of health spending, but also the efficiency with which resources are allocated and managed. They pointed to governance gaps within the health system that affect its ability to achieve the desired outcomes. These include the multiplicity of entities leading and managing different components of the health system, the existence of multiple decision-making centers, and limited coordination, integration, and information-sharing among healthcare providers.
They stressed that this fragmentation can, in some cases, lead to duplication of services and spending and the inefficient use of available resources, limiting the ability to build an integrated health system centered on patients’ needs.
They also emphasized the need to develop more effective coordination mechanisms among the different components of the health sector and to link planning, financing, and service delivery within an integrated national vision.
The speakers considered the pharmaceutical system an essential component of the healthcare system rather than a separate sector. They said the success of the health system should 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 be measured by citizens’ ability to obtain the appropriate healthcare and medicines, at the right time and in the right place.
In this context, the policy paper showed that the central issue in access to medicines is not necessarily the existence of a nationwide shortage, but rather a potential gap between the availability of medicines within the system and patients’ actual ability to obtain them at the point of service delivery. A medicine may be available in central warehouses or covered by a procurement contract, while a health center may experience a temporary shortage, or a patient may receive only part of their prescription.
The paper called for moving beyond viewing medicines through the simple binary of “available or unavailable” and adopting more precise indicators that measure the proportion of prescriptions dispensed in full, the number of days medicines are out of stock at each health facility, the speed of replenishment, cases of partial dispensing, and the number of times patients are forced to return to a health center or purchase medicines from the private sector.
Participants also stressed the importance of restoring the role of primary healthcare, noting that public confidence in health centers has declined in recent years in favor of seeking care directly from hospitals. This has increased pressure and costs at higher levels of care and resulted in hospitals providing services that could be handled more efficiently and at a lower cost through primary healthcare.
They called for rebuilding public trust in health centers by expanding the scope and improving the quality of services they provide, while ensuring the availability of the necessary staff, medical specialties, medicines, and diagnostic tests. They also called for strengthening the role of comprehensive health centers so that they can function more like “mini-hospitals,” capable of handling a greater proportion of health conditions—particularly chronic and non-communicable diseases—without referring patients to hospitals unless necessary.
They noted that strengthening comprehensive health centers would help ease the heavy pressure on hospitals, reduce waiting times and transportation costs for patients, and improve geographic equity in access to healthcare services, particularly in governorates and areas located far from major hospitals.
For its part, the policy paper recommended developing a national “pharmaceutical demand intelligence” system, so that estimates of medicine needs are not based solely on quantities dispensed in the past, but also take into account the number of patients, disease burden, demographic changes, unmet demand, and the movement of patients between different healthcare providers.
It also called for using electronic inventory systems as an early-warning tool for medicines at risk of running 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 strengthening communication with patients regarding generic medicines and therapeutic alternatives.
At the conclusion of the conference, participants stressed that improving access to medicines does not necessarily require establishing new institutions, but rather improving the governance and integration of existing institutions, enhancing the efficiency of resource use, and placing patients and their health outcomes at the center of planning and evaluation. This, they said, would ensure that the value of health spending is directly linked to the services, treatment, and medicines that citizens actually receive.