Resource
Cost of corruption in healthcare, measuring its impact and strengthening anti-corruption strategies
A draft for consultation purposes © World Health Organization 2025. All rights reserved.
Description
Corruption in health systems is a significant barrier to achieving universal health coverage (UHC), leading to wasted resources, compromised quality of care, and preventable illness and death. While it is well known that corruption imposes substantial costs, effectively addressing the issue requires robust methods to measure and monitor its financial and health impacts.
This discussion document provides an overview of existing approaches to estimating the cost of corruption in healthcare, offering insights to inform anti-corruption, transparency, and accountability (ACTA) policies and interventions. It highlights promising methodologies for assessing corruption-related losses and underscores the feasibility of empirical measurement.
This discussion document provides an overview of existing approaches to estimating the cost of corruption in healthcare, offering insights to inform anti-corruption, transparency, and accountability (ACTA) policies and interventions. It highlights promising methodologies for assessing corruption-related losses and underscores the feasibility of empirical measurement.
This is a draft intended for review by experts and all interested parties for consultation on the draft text. The content of this document is not final, and the text may be subject to revisions before publication.
The document may not be reviewed, abstracted, quoted, reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated or adapted, in part or in whole, in any form or by any means without the permission of the World Health Organization.