Corruption
A variety of illegal practices have become prominent in many public heath systems. These include requests for under-the-counter payments, sale of drugs, and acceptance of kickbacks from suppliers of drugs and equipment. Their impact is to make access to care less equal and to reduce the impact of good government health policies.
These practices can sometimes be reduced by strict enforcement of laws. Where public sector pay is very low and informal markets have emerged, these practices can become part of the livelihood strategies of health workers. In this case, they can only be tackled as part of a systematic reform of the health system.
- Global Corruption Report 2006: corruption and health
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This report, published by Transparency International, looks at the causes, scale and nature of corruption in health care, and considers ways to tackle it. Chapters include: corruption in hospitals and in the pharmaceutical sector; informal payments for health care; links with HIV and AIDS; and a number of country reports and recent research papers.
Recommended readings
- Corruption : the issues
- ( A. W. Goudie; D. Stasavage / OECD Development Centre , 1997)
- Corruption comes in many varieties. In different countries it has different determining factors, forms and impacts on development. In any given context, effective policy design calls for an accurate...
- Official, unofficial and informal fees for health care
- ( J. R. Killingsworth / World Health Organization , 2002)
- For the patient, all fee payments for health services look alike. Is there any point in treating fees ‘outside’ the health system – unofficial and informal fees - as intrinsically different to those ...
Latest Additions
- Accountability for reasonableness framework could improve transparency and effectiveness of Global Fund projects
- ( L. Kapiriri; D. Martin / Bulletin of the World Health Organization : the International Journal of Public Health , 2006)
- This article, from the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, argues that the suspension of funding to Uganda from the Global Fund could have been avoided. The article outlines how the Global Fund...
- International focus needed to address counterfeit drugs
- ( M. Forzley / World Health Organization , 2006)
- This concept paper, prepared as a background document for a World Health Organization (WHO) conference held in February 2006, explores the problem of counterfeit drugs and considers steps needed to ad...
- A call for action on corruption in health systems
- ( Transparency International , 2006)
- This report, published by Transparency International, looks at the causes, scale and nature of corruption in health care, and considers ways to tackle it. Chapters include: corruption in hospitals an...
