Maravi

Abuse of health funds

Abuse of health funds
By The Post
Sun 07 Nov. 2010, 03:59 CAT

Health is an essential right of all men and a responsibility of society as a whole.
We all know the severity of the tragic health conditions that adversely affect the great majority of our people. It is clear to all that the solution for this and other serious problems lies in the elimination of under-development, but a lot can be done right now.

We need to struggle urgently to tackle the present critical situation of health in our country through the massive mobilisation of national and international financial and human resources required. It is absolutely necessary to combat malaria, the leading cause of mortality in our country. There is a crying need to extend health services, train the required technical personnel and guarantee the essential basic medicines which such conditions demand.

And as long as health fails to be considered a fundamental right of every citizen and a duty of the community; as long as the responsibility of the government and of society in regard to healthcare fails to be recognised; as long as inequalities in the distribution of health services fail to disappear; as long as poverty, hunger, ignorance and squalor fail to be directly fought against, little will be achieved in improving the human health in our country.

And special attention needs to be paid to the health of our children. Whatever efforts are made today to protect them, to prevent their death and illnesses, to provide them with food, housing, medicine, clothing and education will shape the basic human qualities of that decisive percentage of the future population of our country. And yet, in view of the present trends, what sort of country will we hand over to those children? What sort of life lies ahead for these children? What will their quality of life be like?

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and wellbeing of oneself and of one’s family. The right to live a dignified life can never be attained unless one has reasonable access to health care and other basic necessities of life. The right to health implies that everyone has the right to medical care when sick. This obliges the government to create conditions in which every person has access to medical services and attention in the event of sickness. This right obliges the government to provide enough funds for preventative healthcare and basic healthcare assistance. This right extends to preventative aspect of health care. This includes imporved nutrition, sanitation, immunization, education on health, improvement of all aspects on environmental and industrial hygiene. This right also obliges the government to pay special attention to epidemic, endemic and occupational diseases. There should be policies oriented at prevention, control and treatment of such diseases. This right also obliges the government to pay special attention to the improvement of health conditions of the children.

Given all this, it is difficult to understand how a government that claims to uphold the sanctity of life can allow funds provided by donors to combat malaria and generally improve the health of our people to be squandered, misused, misapplied, misappropriated or stolen. Many nations throughout the world have generously donated to the Global Fund to help improve the health of our people. But this money has not been used or accounted for properly. People have enriched themselves from such funds, at the expense of the health or lives of our people. What type of people are these who can steal from the sick, the dying?

And as Ray Chambers, the UN Secretary General’s special envoy for malaria, has correctly observed, “It is an integrity duty of the highest moral requirement to ensure that those funds are taken care of and not abused." The irregularities in the use of such donor funds at the Ministry of Health raise a lot of questions about our ethics as a nation.

Life is sacred, a gift from God to be valued from the moment of conception until death. One cannot claim to uphold the sanctity of life if there is no provision for minimal healthcare for all; if funds provided by donors to save the lives of our people, especially the poor and the vulnerable, are allowed to be abused, squandered or stolen .

There is no future development without healthy citizens. And every person, whether rich or poor, has an equal right to receive healthcare. But this will not be possible if money provided for this purpose continues to be stolen. And in most cases, those stealing or misusing such funds are the people entrusted with our lives. These are political leaders and other public officers at very high levels.

Instead of ensuring that our people benefit from such funds, they make it a point to enrich themselves in all sorts of ways at their expense. They find ways to siphon off these funds for their own personal use through all sorts of schemes. Whenever they see that there are funds provided by donors, they position themselves to invisibly become the suppliers of this or that service or goods to the units disbursing such funds. Workshops are carried out in their lodges where exorbitant rates are paid. All sorts of services and equipment are supplied through companies they indirectly own and control or are owned and controlled by their friends or family members. At the end of the day, very little is provided from such funds. The net beneficiaries are themselves. And the politicians in power have never hesitated to abuse funds and other resources given to the Ministry of Health for their election campaigns. Compromised public officers belonging to them are strategically placed to man the Ministry of Health and other units controlling or disbursing such funds and help them to abuse or steal whenever they have something that needs funding. This is one of the most abused ministries when it comes to elections. It’s not only money that dubiously leaves this ministry for elections but also automobiles and fuel. We saw this in the 2001 elections that brought Levy Mwanawasa to power.

Frederick Chiluba used the Ministry of Health to fund Levy’s campaign. And Kashiwa Bulaya played a very key role in all that to a point where when it came to prosecuting him for corruption, Levy and George Kunda connived with Chalwe Mchenga, their Director of Public Prosecutions, to grant Bulaya a nolle prosequi. And today although convicted and sentenced to prison, Bulaya is serving his term in the comfort of the University Teaching Hospital and not Lusaka Central Prison where he is supposed to be. This is what corruption does to the country. We also saw the abuse of Ministry of Health resources in the 2008 elections by Rupiah Banda’s campaign. Ministry of Health automobiles were being used as transport for his image builders and other members of his campaign team. And when all this was happening, the sick in many parts of our country had no transport to take them to hospitals. This is how heartless our public officers can be. This situation should not be allowed to continue because we risk losing the vital international financial support that our health sector desperately needs. Right now we do not have the capacity to finance all our people’s health needs and we have to rely on donor support. But the use of other people’s money calls for very high levels of accountability and prudence in the use of such funds. Failure to meet these expected standards may result in our country losing donor support in this critical sector. If we love our people, especially the poor, we cannot continue to allow such abuses that risk international financing to go unchallenged. With the removal of the abuse of office offence from our Anti Commission Act, we may see an increase – and not a reduction – in the misuse and theft of funds given to the Ministry of Health to combat malaria and other diseases. There is need for us to be vigilant on this score at all times.

Labels: HEALTHCARE

posted by MrK @ 4:46 PM