Riyaz Patel
President Cyril Ramaphosa has launched the Health Sector Anti-Corruption Forum aimed at ensuring, among other things, that the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill, currently before Parliament, is shielded from corrupt practices.
The initiative is a collaboration between various stakeholders to combat fraud and corruption in the health sector.
Ramaphosa said he got a rude awakening during campaigning for the recent elections when he became aware of the billions of rands that were allocated to health services were being siphoned off by fraudsters.
“It pained me that access to health had been impacted by corruption, some pay above the official rate for free services. Moonlighting nurses neglect patients and vehicles are hired out or sold,” he said.
“This about reducing wastage and excess. We cannot achieve these objectives for as long as corruption persists.”
Stakeholders signed a pact at the Union Buildings in Pretoria which outlined the terms of reference, mutual support and cooperation they will lend towards the fight against fraud and corrupt practices in the healthcare sector.
“The health sector – public and private – is vulnerable to fraud and corruption because of large and varied numbers of transactions on goods and services in terms of fraudulent orders, tender irregularities, fiscal dumping by government departments through non-governmental organisations, bribery, over-pricing, poor governance, transfer of liabilities to the State, and bogus and fraudulent qualifications,” said the President.
The establishment of the forum follows the signing of the 2018 Presidential Health Summit Compact, which mandated government and social partners to work together to reform the healthcare system.
“We need to capacitate the entities that are going to be carrying out this work. If corruption in the health sector is not addressed it will undermine the efforts to ensure quality healthcare access for all,” said the President.
The National Prosecuting Authority’s Director of Public Prosecutions, Shamila Batohi, said while the NPA has made headway in securing funds to hire more prosecutors, there is still a long way to go.
“The Hawks still have a very big capacity problem and this is where the majorities of this forums cases will go. I urge that the capacity of the hawks be looked at,” said Batohi.
Health Minister Zweli Mkhize noted that this initiative was particularly important in light of the scepticism about the NHI due to current perceptions of corruption in the public sector.
“Health corruption costs lives…. We have to make sure that NHI pool of funds is not wiped out through fraud and corruption,” Ramaphosa said.
The anti-corruption mechanism comprises the Special Investigating Unit, Health Department, the Council for Medical Schemes, the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, the Financial Intelligence Centre, the Health Funders Association, the Health Professions Council of South Africa, Corruption Watch, the National Prosecuting Authority, Section 27 and the board of Healthcare Funders of Southern Africa.
