Free online webinar

There is global recognition that a lack of transparency and accountability in health systems is a threat to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal #3 (‘Good Health and Wellbeing’). When there is a lack of transparency and accountability, corruption may thrive.

The pharmaceutical sector is particularly at risk of corruption given its technical complexity, its many stakeholders and the vast sums of money that are found within it. Anti-corruption, transparency and accountability mechanisms are vital to improving global access to essential medicines, preventing diversion and theft of medicines, protecting against illegal pharmaceutical promotion, and ensuring that medicines are safe and not falsified, as well as ensuring value for pharmaceutical expenditure. These risks are heightened today given our global pandemic.

Recent trade agreements often include rules framed around transparency and anti-corruption, and some contain specific provisions purporting to advance transparency and procedural fairness in pharmaceutical coverage programs. These provisions have been criticised, however, for their focus on making government decision making more transparent to industry rather than increasing the transparency of industry practices to governments and the public. Some provisions may present barriers to transparency and accountability in the pharmaceutical sector, for example, by preventing governments from requiring financial information from pharmaceutical companies as a condition for approving medicines.

This seminar explores the vulnerabilities in the pharmaceutical sector, strategies to address them, and the implications of trade agreements for efforts to address corruption and improve transparency and accountability in this context.

Speakers:

Professor Jillian Kohler

Professor at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Professor Kohler is also Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Governance, Transparency and Accountability in the Pharmaceutical Sector and a Connaught Scholar 2020. Dr Kohler’s research is focused on fair access to essential medicines with a particular focus anti-corruption, transparency and accountability in the pharmaceutical sector. She pioneered the methodology on good governance in the pharmaceutical system for the World Bank, which was subsequently adopted by the WHO and has been applied in over 38 countries globally. She has written extensively on pharmaceutical policy issues and has provided expert advice on pharmaceutical policy for many organizations including the WHO, the UNDP, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Deborah Gleeson

Senior Lecturer in Public Health at La Trobe University. Her research focuses primarily on trade agreements and public health, particularly access to pharmaceuticals, and she has published extensively on this topic. Her recent book with Ronald Labonté, Trade Agreements and Public Health, provides an introduction to the topic for health policy makers, researchers and advocates. She is involved in advocacy for healthy trade agreements with the Public Health Association of Australia.

Zoom links will be sent to you once you have registered.

The seminar is supported by La Trobe University’s Building Healthy Communities Research Focus Area, the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto, the WHO Collaborating Centre for Governance, Accountability and Transparency in the Pharmaceutical Sector and the Connaught Global Challenge Award.