The Urgent Need for Transparent and Accountable Procurement of Medicine and Medical Supplies in Times of COVID-19 Pandem
- PDF / 496,107 Bytes
- 4 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 106 Downloads / 123 Views
(2020) 13:58
COMMENTARY
Open Access
The Urgent Need for Transparent and Accountable Procurement of Medicine and Medical Supplies in Times of COVID-19 Pandemic Jillian Clare Kohler1* and Tom Wright2
Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed unprecedented and complex public policy issues. One that has emerged as a challenge for many countries globally is how to ensure the efficient and effective procurement of quality medical supplies. Existing corruption pressures on procurement—everything from undue influence to the outright bribery of public officials—has been amplified by the pandemic, and thus demands commensurate policy responses. We argue that transparency and accountability in procurement are essential to preventing the corruption risks that threaten the health and well-being of populations. Keywords: Procurement, Transparency, Accountability, Corruption, COVID-19, Health policy
Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed unprecedented and complex public policy issues. One that has emerged as a challenge for many countries globally is how to ensure the efficient and effective procurement of quality medical supplies. During the pandemic, governments have scrambled to secure, not only essential medicines, but personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators, medicines, and diagnostics. A quick Google search shows that this has even been the case in countries with robust health systems, such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany [1–3]. Urgency, demand, and shortages have placed new stress on global supply chains, leaving them vulnerable to further disruption. As a result, the market-distorting effect of price gouging and the dangerous purchasing of flawed and/or falsified goods has already been observed in many countries. * Correspondence: [email protected] 1 University of Toronto Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, 144 College Street, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3M2, Canada Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
Notably, “procurement is an underappreciated health system function…inefficiencies… leave some of the poorest countries paying some of the highest drug prices in the world” [4]. Equally important, the procurement process is one of the greatest risks for corruption among all government functions [5]. Corruption is defined by the leading global anticorruption organization, Transparency International, as, “the misuse of entrusted power for private gain” [6]. It is a global phenomenon that manifests in different forms and within all types of organizations [7]. Corruption can foster inequities as it skews how resources are distributed and create access barriers to public services and goods, such as essential medicines. Ideally, the good procurement of pharmaceuticals supports access to essential medicines for the population. Yet, when corruption infiltrates the pharmaceutical procurement processes, health goals can be threatened by possible consequences such as pharmaceutical shortages, inflated drug prices, and the distribution of falsified and substandard es
Data Loading...
