By Lumbiwe Mwanza
ZAMBIA Medical Association (ZMA) president Crispin Moyo says corruption in the health sector can be a matter of life and death hence the need to design effective mitigation strategies to curb all corrupt activities.
The 2022 Zambia Bribe Payers Index has indicated a minimal reduction in bribes to public officers. However, the Index has also revealed that the Ministry of Health received more bribes last year accounting for 11.9 percent.
Speaking to The Scoop, Dr. Moyo says corruption remains a very big issue that has continued to affect service delivery of many sectors but that the Ministry of Health should never appear on lists that involve corruption.
“For me, I think the Ministry of Health should never appear on the list because that goes against the ethics as well as the practice of how patients are being cared for. There is a need for reorientation of health personnel in terms of diagnosing problems of corruption in the health sector,’’ Dr. Moyo said.
Dr. Moyo says anti-corruption strategies such as transparency and accountability measures, codes of conduct, whistle-blower protection, and higher wages and benefits for workers could be important and initial steps in curbing corruption in the sector.
Dr. Moyo says in view of attaining the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) commitment to achieve universal health coverage, effective strategies aimed at building a resilient health sector should be enforced.
“There needs to be more engagements with the private sector also when it comes to corruption in the health sector as there are potential partners in such illegal acts. There is no way the public servants can be working alone in such acts of bribes. There must be private sector involvement hence the need to engage even the private sector,” he said.
He says to ensure good governance in the health system, there is a need to support multi-stakeholder initiatives and continuous research on how to curb corruption in health systems.
