Abstracts

79 African Parliament, the Council for Medical Schemes is mandated to regulate health plans in a fair and transparent manner. The council accomplishes this by informing the public about their rights and obligations regarding medical plans, handling complaints raised by members attentively, and advising the Minister of Health of necessary interventions to attain public health objectives. In September 2019, the council suspended five senior officials for allegations of corrupt and unethical conduct reported by whistleblowers. These allegations include, but were not limited to, collusion in the appointment of, and irregular spending on, service providers (Cronje, 2019). Furthermore, to promote accountability, the South African government established an independent body called the Office of the Health Ombud under the National Health Amendment Act of 2013. A health ombudsman, also known as a health service commissioner, works with citizens to investigate and deal with their complaints regarding public agencies in an economical and fair manner. The health ombudsman’s role in investigating the Life Esidimeni tragedy in 2015 has been applauded. He discovered that no plan existed to ensure that the money that had been saved from the termination of the 40-year contract between the Department of Health and Life Esidimeni for providing mental health services actually was used for the patients’ benefit, making room for regulatory oversight and corruption to occur (Durojaye & Agaba, 2018). Ombudsmen are one, but only one, element in a range of organizations and efforts required to be successful in the anticorruption campaign. Recommendations The South African government has a robust set of anticorruption laws and a progressive constitution that guarantees the right to have access to health care services. Therefore, South Africa does not necessarily need additional legislation. Instead, the government must first realize the magnitude of the problem and fully take advantage of the strong legal framework that it already possesses. While the anticorruption forum held in October 2019 was a crucial initiative, more coordination and integration of anticorruption work across all organizations are necessary to efficaciously tackle themultidimensional issues involved. South Africa must further strengthen accountability, increase transparency, and empower civilians as the problem of corruption still prevails in the public health care sector. Bolster Accountability and Increase Transparency Increasing accountability and trans- parency go hand in hand. When more information concerning health authorities’ decisions becomes more accessible to the public, then the detection of irregularities will be easier. South African health departments already have the necessary policies, such as the NDP and fraud prevention plans, in place that push for a monitoring system in provincial departments transactions, including procurement. Beyond these existing policies, regular performance evaluations must occur to ensure that public officials operate in the interest of their citizens. Corruption Watch suggested that one way to prevent procurement corruption is to apply open contracting, which uses government transparency to foster participation between public bodies, business, and civil society. By making procurement information accessible, businesses can compete fairly to win contracts, and civil society can monitor the process to identify tender irregularities and investigate corruption. Open contracting can help combat corruption by showing who is buying what, from whom, and at what price. For example, in 2012, Indonesia’s Open Tender platform, which analyzes the metadata of major public contracts, detected corruption risk in a contract to supply medical devices to hospitals in one of its provinces. Journalists and a civil society organization uncovered an overpricing scam involving several public officials. As a result, two men were sent to prison, and the governor of the province is still under investigation as a suspect (Amin, 2017). South Africa can adopt the same approach in its medical procurement system to avoid pharmaceutical stockouts due to corruption. Review of another project that introduced a district health planning and reporting system, centering around an annual review