Donors should focus their aid at the poorest countries and on the achievement of the [Millennium Development Goals]…Effective aid needs to be untied, as tied aid is less efficient for the recipient and invites corruption. It is essential that aid should be provided to finance local as well as recurrent expenditures especially in the health and education sectors. Moreover, donors need to harmonize procedures with those of partner country systems to improve the effectiveness of development assistance.

World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization, ILO, 2004
co-chairs presidents T. Halonen (Finland) and B.W. Mkapa (Tanzania)

U4 welcomes any feedback on the U4 Health pages

Approaches to corruption in drug management

Gender and corruption in humanitarian assistance

Low salaries, the culture of per diems and corruption

Corruption challenges at sub-national level in Indonesia

Corruption in the health and education sectors in Mali

Tackling forms of corruption that affect the poor most

Review of corruption in the health sector: theory, methods and interventions .pdf
(Taryn Vian)
This article presents a comprehensive framework and a set of methodologies for describing and measuring how opportunities, pressures and rationalizations influence corruption in the health sector. The article discusses implications for intervention, and presents examples of how theory has been applied in research and practice. Challenges of tailoring anti-corruption strategies to particular contexts, and future directions for research, are addressed.
Published in Health Policy and Planning (Volume 23, Number 2, March 2008). [The Open Access to this article is sponsored by U4]

A tale of two health systems. pdf
(William D. Savedoff)

A closer look at two countries demonstrates how corruption manifests itself differently across health systems. Colombia and Venezuela are neighbouring Latin American countries with comparable incomes that share many similarities in history, culture and language. Until 1990, the two countries also had similarly fragmented health systems, comprised of a large social security institutions that served the formal sector; national or state-level governments that directly provided health care services to the rest of the population; and an active private sector that relied predominantly on direct payment for services by patients and their families. In the early 1990s, Colombia engaged a series of dramatic health reforms that decentralised public services to the municipal level and, in parallel, created a mandatory universal insurance system with the participation of non-governmental insurers (for-profit and non-profit).

Detailed Implementation Review India Health Sector 2006-2007 Volume II .pdf
This Report summarizes the findings of a Detailed Implementation Review (DIR) of five Bank-financed projects in India: the Food and Drugs Capacity Building Project, the Orissa Health Systems Development Project, the Second National AIDS Control Project, the Malaria Control Project, and the Tuberculosis Control Project.

Governance and Corruption in Public Health Care Systems
Maureen Lewis, Centre for Global Development, 2006

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.