Webinar: From strategy to collective action: shaping healthier markets for childhood cancer medicines

Childhood cancer remains one of the greatest global health equity challenges. The Global Platform for Access to Childhood Cancer Medicines (Global Platform) aims to provide an uninterrupted supply of quality-assured cancer medicines to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).  

While survival rates exceed 80% in many high-income countries, survival remains below 30-40% in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), in considerable part due to barriers in accessing quality-assured, affordable and uninterrupted supplies of essential cancer medicines. In addition to the supply of medicines and accompanying country systems strengthening, the Global Platform’s long-term aim is to shape the global childhood cancer medicines market, so that essential medicines become reliably available, affordable, and sustainable around the world.  

To this end, the Global Platform recently published Closing the childhood cancer survival gap through sustainable access to medicines: market shaping strategy 2026–2030, aiming to address systemic market failures that limit the availability, affordability, accessibility, and quality of childhood cancer medicines globally. The strategy proposes ten interlinked market shaping interventions aimed at creating healthier, more resilient and sustainable markets for childhood cancer medicines.  

This webinar will serve as the first of several global dissemination events following the publication of the strategy on 15th September 2026. It will provide an opportunity for dialogue among governments, manufacturer representatives, regulators, procurement agencies, civil society, financiers, and people with lived experience on the collective actions required to transform the childhood cancer medicines market.  

This publication with its well-defined interventions provides a clear pathway for the Global Platform, countries and partners to take bold steps to build on important gains made to advance equitable health outcomes for pediatric cancer patients which is in alignment with SDG 3.2 and 3.4.1 of the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals, especially in LMIC settings.  

This strategy is not just a vision for the future. Its implementation is already underway. Several of its market-shaping interventions are being advanced through the Global Platform and its partners, generating valuable lessons and building momentum for broader action. The launch of this strategy marks the beginning of the next phase: translating evidence into coordinated, collective action at scale.  

Participants can join the live discussion by submitting questions through the Zoom Q&A function. The webinar will be recorded. The working language of the webinar will be English. Interpretation will be provided in Arabic, French, Russian and Spanish. 

Webinar objectives 

• present key findings related to markets failures, barriers, and root causes of poor access to childhoods cancer medicines; 
• outline the market shaping strategy which includes ten priority interventions and expected outcomes; 
• facilitate high level dialogue among stakeholders regarding the collective action that must be taken to create sustainable and equitable access to childhood cancer medicines globally; and to 
• signal childhood cancer medicines market shaping as a potential model for addressing broader access challenges for essential medicines in the field of noncommunicable diseases.