New report on corruption in health.

The world's health systems are vulnerable to corruption in every country and at every level from central government to patients themselves, according to an encyclopaedic report into corruption released by Transparency International. The Global corruption report 2006 documents corruption on a vast scale in both rich and poor countries, and its enormous cost to public health. Each year hundreds of billions of dollars are siphoned from the world's US$ 3.1 trillion annual health spending into private pockets, according to the report published on 1 February. The Global corruption report, now in its sixth edition, draws attention each year to corruption in a particular industry or sector as well as providing a broader overview of corruption across the world. This year's report which focuses on the health sector " will be the reference book for corruption and health for the next coming years, " according to Dr Hans Hogerzeil, WHO's Director of the Department of Medicines Policy and Standards. The report " clearly demonstrates by its examples that corruption is a worldwide problem, existing in both high-and low-income countries, " he added. " Thus no country should feel offended and restrained to talk about it; most countries have reason to look critically at their current situation and should decide how they can promote good governance. " But Transparency International, a Berlin-based nongovernmental organization, was unable to arrive at an estimate of the amount lost globally to corruption, conceded Diana Rodríguez, one of the report's editors. " Quantifying corruption in medicine is especially difficult because so many possible cases, like billing for unnecessary procedures, could also be put down to clinical error, or a simple mistake. There are also grey areas, such as the hospitality and funding many doctors receive from the pharmaceutical industry that may or may not be considered corruption, " Rodríguez said. In country after country, however, the evidence suggests that losses of public funds are significant. In the United States, both Medicaid and Medicare — government-run health insurance organizations — estimate that 5–10% of their budget is lost to overpayment. In Cambodia, researchers, health workers and administrators interviewed in July 2005 said it was widely assumed that between 5% and 10% of the health budget disappears before it is even paid by the Ministry of Finance to the Ministry of Health. At the other end of the system, patients are frequently driven to supplement formal health budgets with …