Integrating a focus on anti-corruption, transparency and accountability in health systems assessments

Overview

Corruption in the health sector has high costs both in terms of lives lost and financial resources wasted. Recognizing the importance of this issue, WHO Member States and development partners are working to prevent and control corruption. As part of this efforts, it is critical to advance a more coherent approach towards mainstreaming anti-corruption efforts into work to strengthen and repurpose health systems towards universal health coverage. The goal of this work is to support the efforts of WHO Member States to prevent corruption through greater transparency and reinforced accountability mechanisms in their health systems.

To concretely support these efforts, this document proposes new ways to approach health systems assessment to help diagnose corruption risk areas and help countries to decide which ant-corruption, transparency and accountability approaches should be deployed in response.