Health corruption detracts from many resources that should go to citizens, to their care and well-being. The only data that the WHO has corresponds to 2011 and then it calculated that more than 56 billion euros were lost each year due to this. A Transparency International report last year indicated that 6% of global health spending is “lost” due to these practices.
“We have to fight against health corruption because it increases inequality and increases mortality. It is estimated that corruption causes 140,000 child deaths and increases resistance to antibiotics. Because money is stolen that should go to care, care and prevention.”
This was indicated by Martin McKee, research director of the European Observatory of Health Systems and Policies, during the seminar against health corruption Adressing Corruption in Health Systems: Towards Equity and Efficiency, which was held this morning at the headquarters of the Ministry of Health. Health and organized by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Among the speakers, the Minister of Health, Mónica García, who explained that the Observatory against corruption and health fraud, recently approved, will have a fundamental mission in prevention, the establishment of an alert and collaboration system to stop all illicit and fraudulent behaviors “that damage the health of healthcare, society and democracy.”
At a time when there are investigative commissions in Congress and the Senate on the purchase of masks during the pandemic, the minister believes that bad practices must be combated so that they are never committed again. You cannot “market our health,” she has indicated. "It is no longer a door, but rather a revolving parasitization of our health," she insisted.
The speakers have made it clear that corruption can be stopped, but transparency must be improved in the purchasing process of health and pharmacological products, something for which artificial intelligence can help. But, the diversity of data, without order or control, of the autonomous communities (in the case of Spain), makes the task difficult, pointed out the speakers, among them, David Clarke, head of Unit, Governance and Administration of Information Systems Unit. WHO Health; Sofía Viñayo, deputy director of the National Anti-Fraud Coordination Service (SNCA) of Spain and Olga Escribano Gómez, Director of the Division for the Promotion of Integrity in Public Procurement and Institutional Coordination of the Independent Office for Regulation and Supervision of Procurement (OIReSco) .
For her part, Dina Balabanova, professor of Health Policies and Systems at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (United Kingdom), has asked citizens to get involved and not give up in the face of what she considers "a problem that "There is no solution." According to Balabanova, corruption does have a solution and there are many instruments to stop it, instruments promoted by the European Union and the countries themselves. But more will and greater coordination are needed, he noted.
The Observatory against corruption and health fraud will be in charge of prevention, deepening transparency and facilitating compliance with the law, especially public sector contract legislation, explains the Ministry of Health.
Firstly, it will be in charge of preparing a manual of practices on what not to do in public procurement. “If we say to a patient that the first thing is to do no harm, when making contracts we also have to be very clear that there are actions that are a breeding ground for corruption,” García pointed out.
Secondly, a risk map will be created within the National Health System, aimed at identifying the critical points where corruption and health fraud are concentrated. And, finally, an intense collaboration calendar will be developed with all those national and international bodies and organizations that have been assigned oversight functions in contracting.
“We are not risking the health of citizens and also their trust in our institutions,” the minister pointed out.
