That corruption has penetrated so deeply into our healthcare system, where we see expensive health equipment being bought and never used, is a mark of how corrupt our institutions have become.
This should act as a wake-up call for the health ministry to resolve the problems within the system that allow such corruption to take place. Such action could even act as a model to rid corruption in other institutions.
This is the story thus far. Over the past 15 to 20 years, health officials and local government hospitals have been buying medical equipment worth millions from contractors and suppliers to use up their annual equipment funds allocated to them by the health ministry, whether they have the space, trained personnel, or even the power supply to run them.
Meanwhile, the contractors and suppliers have pulled a disappearing act upon delivering the equipment and getting their checks in hand, rather than guide the hospitals. The latter have also allegedly paid bribes to ministers, high ranking government officials and doctors to get their orders approved.
Not only has there been a tremendous waste of money, but an even bigger waste of time, with the patients as the ones to suffer.
The years could have been spent on buying the right equipment, expanding building space to house the equipment, at least in the district hospitals, training operators to use this equipment, ensuring the right kind of advanced equipment was being used, as well as increasing power supply so as to run the equipment, rather than nothing being done, as was the case.
It’s not impossible to imagine the number of patients who would have been helped if these steps were followed. And our country’s healthcare sector, though it has come far, would have gone even further.
Now is the time to make reparations for past mistakes and turn things around.