To: RCPharm Executive Team, Royal College of Pharmacy (RCPharm) 

Cc: RCPharm Board of Directors

Date: 28.9.26
 

Dear Members of the Royal College of Pharmacy Executive Team and Board of Trustees,

As registered pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, pharmaceutical scientists, healthcare professionals, dedicated members of the Royal College of Pharmacy, and members of the public, we write to express our profound concern regarding commercial partnerships accepted across the RCPharm Group. More specifically, we refer to the upcoming Annual Conference 2026 organised by RCPharm in London and Online, which is being sponsored by Teva UK Limited who is also an exhibitor.

Teva UK Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of Israel-based Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd: a multinational pharmaceutical company entangled with the Israeli military, part of the institutional apparatus of apartheid and responsible for corporate malfeasance, evidenced later in the letter.

We are deeply concerned about the collaboration with Teva, particularly, for an event that is celebrating the change from Royal Pharmaceutical Society to Royal College of Pharmacy. Left unhindered, this would represent a catastrophic governance failure that would violate the core ethical foundations of our profession and would cause irreparable reputational damage to the College.

Our letter outlines the fundamental reasons for the RCPharm to disengage with Teva immediately, evidence of Teva’s misconduct and details appropriate reparations.

1. Funding an illegal occupation in the context of apartheid, genocide and ethnic cleansing sits in direct contradiction with College’s values and principles

The College has already affirmed that access to healthcare is a fundamental human right, especially during conflict. It has called for civilians to have access to essential medicines and for healthcare workers to care for patients without fear of violence, describing attacks on healthcare workers and patients as “deplorable” (Royal Pharmaceutical Society, 2023). Its commercial partnerships should reflect those same principles.

On 8 September 2026, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband stated that the UK government agrees ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is taking place in areas of the West Bank. In the same statement, he acknowledged the destruction of hospitals and clinics in Gaza. His remarks add urgency to concerns healthcare professionals and international bodies have raised for years.

It is shocking to see the College accept sponsorship from Teva while presenting neutrality as a reason to restrain members’ advocacy for Palestinian healthcare workers. The College cannot credibly claim impartiality while accepting commercial revenue and giving brand visibility to a company whose ties to Israel’s wartime mobilisation raise serious ethical concerns. Neutrality cannot be invoked to silence professional solidarity and then set aside when sponsorship is offered.

2. Corporate complicity and the College’s duty of due diligence

On 23 September 2026, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) announced that it was ending its commercial partnership with Teva UK and removing the company as sponsor of the forthcoming RCNi Nursing Leadership Summit. Its letter states that further due diligence identified aspects of Teva Pharmaceuticals’ operations that had been subject to legal sanction and public scrutiny and were inconsistent with RCN and RCNi values. The RCN is also updating its commercial partnership policy. 

Of note, a Teva-sponsored mental health symposium in south London  was cancelled in the Autumn 2025 when local residents, service-users and NHS staff  campaigned against the event.

In response to the Russia-Ukraine war, in March 2022, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, the College’s predecessor, stated that it had removed directly invested Russian assets from the vast majority of its funds and would remove the remainder as soon as possible. 

The Royal College of Pharmacy should now apply the same ethical scrutiny to its investments and commercial partnerships in relation to Israel. We ask the College to disclose any relevant holdings or partnerships, publish the criteria it uses to assess links to violations of Palestinian rights, and act where those criteria are met. Its response to Russia established a precedent; applying that principle consistently is essential to avoiding a double standard.

Taken together, these precedents give the College a compelling reason to examine its proposed Teva sponsorship and any other relevant financial ties. Teva’s activities and its position in the Palestinian pharmaceutical market under occupation have drawn grave concerns. More broadly, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s 2025 report examines how corporate relationships can sustain Israel’s unlawful occupation and contribute to violations of international law and it names several UK companies. 

If the College proceeds with Teva’s sponsorship despite these documented concerns and the RCN’s decision, it will be making a deliberate choice to lend Teva its professional standing and would not be able to dismiss that choice as a routine commercial transaction. The College would need to explain how it has assessed the risk that its endorsement does in legitimising corporate activity linked to unlawful occupation and grave violations of international law.

3. Reputational Damage to the RCPharm

The College’s authority depends on pharmacists, pharmacy professionals, patients and the public trusting it to apply its professional values to its own decisions. That trust is especially important for a newly established College whose members are integral to the NHS. The choice of sponsor for its first annual conference will be highly visible and will signal what the College considers acceptable in a commercial partner. If it proceeds despite the concerns set out in this letter, members may reasonably question whether sponsorship income has taken precedence over ethical judgement. That loss of confidence would extend beyond a single event and would weaken the College’s credibility when it speaks on professional standards, patient welfare and the protection of healthcare workers.

4. Damage to public and professional trust

As a newly established Royal College, RCPharm will be judged by the commercial relationships it chooses to maintain, not only by the sponsors of its first annual conference. An ongoing relationship with Teva would raise enduring questions among pharmacists, patients and the public about whether the College applies its ethical standards when funding is at stake. Ending one sponsorship while retaining other financial ties would leave those questions unresolved. To protect confidence in its independence and professional judgement, the College should end its commercial partnerships with Teva and divest from any direct investments in the company.

Background and supporting evidence

Since October 2023, healthcare in Gaza has suffered devastating destruction. United Nations bodies, the World Health Organization and international human rights monitors have documented:

-Over 1,700 healthcare workers killed including nurses, doctors, paramedics, pharmacists, and allied healthcare staff, averaging more than two healthcare colleagues killed every single day.
-Hundreds of healthcare workers arbitrarily detained, abducted, and subjected to systemic torture in military detention centres, resulting in documented deaths in custody.
-Coordinated sieges, attacks, bombardments, and the forced collapse of most hospitals and primary care clinics across the Gaza Strip.

The concerns about Teva are set out in reporting by Declassified UK, the OpenIntel Complicity Index, campaigns by healthcare workers in Spain, and a civil society petition to the UN Global Compact and have established the following:

- Direct Military Provision and Equipment Donations: Following the declaration of a total siege on Gaza in October 2023, Teva established logistical collection points across five Israeli sites, delivering roughly 1.5 tonnes of equipment, to the Israeli military.
- Operational Military Integration: Senior leadership within Teva confirmed that between 10% and 20% of Teva’s domestic workforce were mobilised into the military during the genocide in Gaza. Notably, Hadar Mama, CEO of Teva's domestic logistics subsidiary (Salomon, Levin & Elstein - SLE), commanded active Israeli military operations inside the Gaza Strip while concurrently directing Teva's corporate logistics, receiving supply consignments gathered by Teva personnel.
- Combat Troop Support Programmes: Teva maintains a long-standing relationship with military battalions via the IDF’s "Adopt-a-Battalion" initiative and directly finances mental health and psychological support programmes for combat forces through schemes such as "Support the Soul" (with Momentum) and partnerships with Thank Israeli Soldiers (TIS).
- Self-Declared National Instrument: Following October 2023, Teva’s Global CEO Richard Francis and regional leadership explicitly designated Teva as "the national pharmaceutical and healthcare company of Israel," openly boasting that the company was able to "have been part of a war and still performed the way it did".
The petition calling for Teva’s removal from the UN Global Compact illustrates that its misconduct extends beyond military complicity to systemic anti-competitive practices, environmental offences, and international bribery:
- Antitrust Violations and Record Penalties: In 2024, the European Commission imposed a historic €462.6 million fine on Teva for abusing its dominant market position, misusing divisional patent procedures, and systematically disseminating misleading information to delay the entry of a generic competitor to its multiple sclerosis medicine, Copaxone.
- Foreign Bribery and Criminal Penalties: In 2016, Teva agreed to pay over $500 million to resolve criminal charges under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) for bribing government officials across Russia, Ukraine, and Mexico to artificially boost public drug registrations and state tenders.
- Price Fixing and Collusion: In 2023, Teva entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the US Department of Justice, admitting to collusive price-fixing conspiracies on essential generic medicines, in addition to prior penalties for unlawful pay-for-delay arrangements across Europe.
- Environmental Offences: Teva has previously been penalised millions of dollars for chronic violations of environmental protection statutes, including the discharge of hazardous pollutants into water and air systems.
Partnering with an entity bearing this track record directly compromises the RCPharm’s governance standards and degrades public trust in our profession.

Recommendations for Immediate Action

We urge the Royal College of Pharmacy’s Board of Trustees and Executive team to take the following actions as a matter of utmost priority:

1. Immediately cancel Teva’s sponsorship and exhibition at the RCPharm Annual Conference 2026.

2. Disclose all current financial and commercial ties with Teva, including sponsorship, advertising, procurement arrangements and any direct investments. Disclose any other investments or partnerships linked to Israel’s unlawful occupation

3. Commission an urgent, independent investigation into the due diligence, governance and oversight that led to the Teva agreement, and review all other financial ties identified through disclosure.

4. Publish the investigation’s findings and the criteria used to assess these relationships, including how the College evaluates links to violations of Palestinian rights and international humanitarian law.

5. End all commercial relationships with Teva and prohibit new agreements with the company across the RCPharm Group.

6. Co-produce a binding Ethical Sponsorship and Procurement Policy with members, setting clear exclusions for companies linked to military occupation, arms procurement networks or attacks on healthcare infrastructure, and apply it consistently across the College’s investments and commercial partnerships.

We call upon the College to consider the aforementioned stipulations, investigative reporting and civil society research and the documented support Teva has provided for the Israeli military and its personnel which has raised wider concerns about its relationship with the occupation. In these circumstances, giving Teva the visibility and credibility of the College’s inaugural conference would be a profound betrayal of our Palestinian colleagues and of the professional values the College claims to uphold. 

Thank you for taking the time to read and understand the concerns raised, we await your response.

Yours sincerely,

Pharmacy Arm of UK Healthcare Petitions to Royal Colleges (UKHPRC)

Global Health BDS (GHBDS)

And the Signatories of this open letter

 

References