This foundational document proposes ways to approach national health planning and the development of policies and strategies to identify corruption risk areas and help countries decide which ACTA approaches should be deployed in response. The goal is to support the efforts to prevent corruption through greater transparency and reinforced accountability mechanisms in health systems.

Corruption in the health sector has high costs both in terms of lives lost and financial resources wasted. This document proposes new ways to approach health systems assessment to help diagnose corruption risk areas and help countries to decide which ant-corruption, transparency and accountability approaches should be deployed in response.

The problem of ghost workers in the health sector is an understudied phenomenon, yet the existence of this form of payroll fraud is a significant drain on public health and overall budgets in some countries, undercutting global and public health goals. This rapid review explores a selection of relevant research to identify types of payroll fraud related to the ghost worker problem, and analyses how the fraud triangle theory can help to explain the prevalence of ghost workers in the health sector.

The main objectives of this rapid literature review are to provide evidence on corruption risks in health financing arrangements and to identify strategies and tactics that can help to reduce corruption. This paper provides evidence on potential vulnerabilities that can lead to corruption in the four core health financing functions: revenue raising; pooling; purchasing; and benefit design, based on the identified literature.