Health Sector
Understand how corruption affects health outcomes in developing countries. Find essential resources for anyone working on anti-corruption within the sector.
Corruption in the health sector is a concern in all countries, but it is especially critical in developing and transitional economies where public resources are already scarce. Corruption reduces resources available for health, lowers the quality, equity and effectiveness of health care services, decreases the volume and increases the cost of services provided. It discourages people to use and pay for services and ultimately has a corrosive impact on the population's level of health.
Explore this U4 Theme Page to learn about the challenges and strategies that can be employed to address the problem:
- Understand why corruption is so prevalent in the health sector
- Study how reformers can integrate anti-corruption efforts into health policy
- Study examples of interventions introduced to help reduce corruption
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New U4 Publication
Good governance for medicines initiatives: Exploring lessons learned
U4 Issue 2013:3 by J.C. Kohler and N. Ovtcharenko. 26p
Select global initiatives in the area of good governance and medicines have been particularly useful in generating a political and policy dialogue around the issue of pharmaceutical system good governance. The initiatives examined in this paper have been taken by the World Bank, the WHO and the Global Fund, as well as the Medicines Transparency Alliance. The main findings include that these initiatives identify weaknesses in the pharmaceutical system and can provide important baseline data. Recommendations include the need for political analysis, monitoring and evaluation, and the streamlining and uniformity of assessment tools across institutions.
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Good practice in strengthening transparency, participation, accountability and integrity
Recommended Reading
Author:
Lewis, M
Release date:
January 2006
Governance and Corruption in Public Health Care Systems
This excellent working paper looks at factual evidence to describe the main challenges facing health care delivery in developing countries, including absenteeism, corruption, informal payments, and mismanagement. The author concludes that good governance is important in ensuring effective health care delivery, and that returns to investments in health are low where governance issues are not addressed. The paper provides policy options for promoting better governance.
Author:
Brinkerhoff, D
Release date:
January 2003
Accountability and Health Systems: overview, framework and strategies
This paper provides a very useful framework for health sector reform, mainly by clarifying a central concept that is subscribed to by reformers yet rarely described clearly: accountability. Defining accountability and breaking it down into three types, Brinkerhoff provides an analytical framework that identifies the large number of actors involved in relationships of accountability in the health sector, provides a useful model for assessing the effectiveness of these relationships, and describes accountability-enhancing strategies in three main areas: reducing abuse, assuring compliance with procedures and standards, and improving performance/learning. Notably, the author places the fight against corruption in its proper context rather than implying that it is the main aim of health reform. While the paper occasionally displays some bias towards market-based health reforms which have met with a mixed record even in advanced democracies, this remains a valuable contribution for reformers in an extraordinarily complex sector.
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