Topic Guide: Corruption in Health Services

Transparency International UK: Pharmaceuticals & Healthcare Programme. http://www.transparency.org.uk...  

This programme by Transparency International's UK chapter is a multi-country initiative to shed light on illicit or unethical dealings between pharmaceutical companies and healthcare facilities and governments. The programme aims to engage pharmaceutical and healthcare companies, civil society, regulatory bodies and international organisations to gather knowledge, expertise, insight and funds regarding the relationship between pharmaceutical companies and healthcare providers.

European Healthcare Fraud and Corruption Network (EHFCN). http://www.ehfcn.org/

 EHFCN was created in 2004 by the EU to help member countries with enforcement activities in all areas of healthcare and pharmaceutical systems. It is a not-for-profit organisation whose members are healthcare and counter-fraud organisations in Europe.  

Gavi Alliance. http://www.gavi.org/about/  

Created in 2000, Gavi is an international organisation – a global vaccine alliance, bringing together public and private sectors with the shared goal of creating equal access to new and underused vaccines for children living in the world’s poorest countries.  

Global Healthcare Anti-Fraud Network (GHCAN). http://www.ghcan.org  

GHCAN's mission is to promote partnerships and communications between international organisations to reduce and eliminate healthcare fraud around the world. GHCAN aims to further this mission by raising awareness internationally about the issue of healthcare fraud, gathering and sharing information on the trends, issues, facts and figures relating to the problem, working cooperatively to improve international standards of practice around fraud prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution and developing joint educational training programmes to bolster and prepare the world’s healthcare anti-fraud professionals.  

Health Action International. http://www.haiweb.org  

HAI works to increase access and improve the rational use of essential medicines. Since 2001, it has partnered with the WHO to provide technical guidance on drug price monitoring and drug usage monitoring. Two of its most important programmes relate directly to healthcare integrity: one concerning international drug price monitoring and another on conflicts of interest. The former is not only concerned with drug prices but also the process of evaluation of prices by procurement agencies within governments and how the prices are generated by pharmaceutical distributors. The latter programme provides advice on how to monitor and control conflict of interest in the health sector.  

Medicines Transparency Alliance (MeTA). http://medicinestransparency.org/  

MeTA brings together all stakeholders in the medicines market to improve access, availability and affordability of medicines for the one-third of the world’s population to whom access is currently denied. In the pilot phase, participants made existing information on the medicines supply chain publicly available and added data where there were gaps in information. This data opacity included information on availability, price, promotion and use of medicines, and MeTA considered possible ways of overcoming these challenges. The second phase of MeTA began in August 2011, and is being guided by the WHO and HAI who together provide the secretariat to the seven countries in which the pilot took place during 2009 and 2010.  

World Health Organisation. http://www.who.int/en/  

The World Health Organisation is a UN Agency that focuses on health and healthcare systems. During the last decade, WHO began to focus on governance issues related to the health sector, publishing several studies on corruption in the health sector and some insights into the relationship between corrupt health management officials and pharmaceutical companies. Additionally, WHO has the Good Governance for Medicines programme, aimed at reducing corruption, overpricing and fraud in relation to procurement of medicines.  

World Medical Association. http://www.wma.net/es/index.html  

The World Medical Association (WMA), founded in 1947, is an international organisation representing physicians. The organisation was created to ensure the independence of physicians and to work for the highest possible standards of ethical behaviour. Its main areas of focus related to healthcare sector integrity refers to ethics, human rights and integrity in healthcare systems. It has produced several guides for practitioners and physicians that aim to increase the ethical treatment of patients worldwide.