PHA-Exchange> UN HEALTH AGENCY LAUNCHES INITIATIVE TO FIGHT CORRUPTION IN MEDICINES PROCUREMENT

[claudio at hcmc.netnam.vn]

New York, Oct 30 2006  5:00PM
With up to $50 billion spent every year on pharmaceutical products and recent 
estimates showing that 
as much as 25 per cent of procured medicines can be lost to fraud, bribery and 
other corrupt 
practices, the United Nations health agency today launched a new initiative to 
help governments 
combat corruption.

“Corruption is a worldwide problem, rife in high- and low-income countries 
alike, and no country 
should feel embarrassed to talk about it,” UN World Health Organization 
(<"http://www.who.int/en/">WHO) Director of Medicines Policy and Standards Hans 
Hogerzeil said of 
the scheme to set up a group of anti-corruption and medicines experts from 
international 
institutions and countries to promote greater transparency in regulation and 
procurement.

“Low income countries are the most vulnerable, and they are the ones we will 
initially support in 
promoting more transparent, money-saving tactics,” he added at a two-day 
meeting beginning in Geneva 
today to set out strategies and set up the initiative.

Before reaching the patients who need them, medicines change hands several 
times in the complex 
production and distribution chain, providing ample opportunity for corruption, 
WHO noted. A recent 
report by Transparency International, a global civil society organization, 
revealed that in one 
country, the value of two out of three medicines supplied through procurement 
was lost to corruption 
and fraud in hospitals.

“This is an aberration when you think that poor populations struggle with the 
double bind of a high 
burden of disease and low access to medical products,” WHO Assistant Director-
General for Health 
Technology and Pharmaceuticals Howard Zucker said. “Countries need to deal 
with this problem and 
ensure that the precious resources devoted to health are being well spent.”

Apart from the loss of resources and the danger posed to patients’ lives, 
corrupt practices also 
allow the entry into the medicines chain of counterfeit and substandard 
products, further 
endangering the health of communities, WHO noted.

Corruption occurs at different stages of the chain and may take on different 
forms ranging from 
bribery of government officials to register medicines without the required 
information and 
deliberate delays by officials to solicit bribes, to favouritism rather than 
professional merit in 
selecting members of registration committees and thefts and embezzlement in the 
distribution chain, 
including in health care facilities.

To combat the problem, WHO plans to strengthen regulatory authorities and 
procurement practices by 
stimulating legislative reform to establish laws against corruption and 
appropriate enforcement and 
punitive measures, and promoting standardized systems of checks and balances to 
prevent abuse by 
making publicly available criteria for selecting regulatory and procurement 
staff and medical products.

The agency will also encourage ethical practices through behaviour change 
activities and staff training.
  2006-10-30 00:00:00.000


___________________

For more details go to UN News Centre at http://www.un.org/news
To listen to news and in-depth programmes from UN Radio go to: 
http://radio.un.org/


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