Patients still ignorant of effects of fighting corruption in healthcare

One-fourth of the activities envisaged by the Country Threshold Program (CTP) in medicare have not ended yet. The delays postpone the positive effects of the run activities. Polls show that the patients' feeling regarding corruption in healthcare has not improved, Info-Prim Neo reports. It's one of the conclusions of monitoring report regarding the implementation of the CTP, presented on February 10, by groups joint in Anti-Corruption Alliance. The report refers to the results of the monitoring in quarter 4 of 2008 and is in the last report compiled by the civil society. 58% of the activities (15) have been achieved fully. 15% (4) are running and meet the deadlines. Among them: drafting clinical protocols, adopting the law to realize the patient's rights and responsibilities regarding the access to information. ¼ (7) activities go beyond deadlines. Lagging behind for 6-9 months are activities as the mechanism protecting integrity warners, law on doctors' accountability and developing web pages of medical entities. Most of the crawling activities need legal or institutional amendments, which do not depend on the Ministry only. Maria Badan, a coordinator with the CreDO group, an organization having monitored the implementation of the CTP in healthcare, says important steps have been made in the area, but still there's much to be done. It's important that the civil society continue the monitoring, she said. According to her, the Health Ministry has largely been an open institution, what cannot be said about other medical institutions. Applying the so-called 'mysterious client' technique in 24 medical institutions has shown that they were not always open, especially when the matter was about planning a visit to the doctor or the transfer from one family doctor to another, Badan specified. According to a poll by Transparency International, 60.4% of respondents consider corruption to be widely spread in medical institutions. The figures have not changed much since the start of the PCT's implementation (68.9%), taking into account the error margin of 4%. According to exit polls, have of the number of patients in hospital and family doctor centers are not aware of the clinical standards and protocols. Many patients are not provided with private rooms while examined. Through the CTP, the Moldovan Government continued to continue, by the support of the US Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), the reform pursuing to curb corruption in five sectors. In this respect, the Government has benefited of assistance worth $24.7 million from the US Government. The measures envisaged by the CTP were to be achieved from 2007 to 2008. The monitoring of the Anti-Corruption Alliance is part of the Strengthening Civil Society Monitoring Capacity Program, implemented by the Academy for Educational Development (AED). The program is funded by the MCC and run by USAID within the CTP.