Corruption Watch points to the devastating impact of corruption on the lives of people reliant on receiving basic healthcare services from public health facilities in South Africa. The report is titled X-Ray:  The critical state of the health sector in SA.

This impact, says the organisation, is intensified in the current context of the coronavirus pandemic sweeping South Africa, and the ability of the struggling health sector to manage this overwhelming challenge.

“Our major headache as a country is to apportion scarce resources to an ailing public health sector that is inherited from apartheid South Africa,” says Corruption Watch researcher Melusi Ncala, author of the report. 

Since its launch in 2012, Corruption Watch has received almost 700 reports of corruption relating to health. In a country where people are afraid to report corruption, these reports are significant.  They highlight the troubling reality that it is the most vulnerable in our society, namely the elderly, women, and children, who are most likely to bear the brunt of the fall-out from corruption. This corruption takes a variety of forms, ranging from embezzlement of funds to procurement irregularities resulting in shortages of medication and malfunctioning equipment, or pressure to pay bribes for access to services that are a basic human right.

Report by Corruption Watch