More than 160 healthcare professionals in Macedonia trained to identify and report corruption

Across Macedonia, more than 160 doctors, midwives, medical staff and other employees of the healthcare system will take part in a special training program aimed at combating corruption in public healthcare. The process is intended to strengthen knowledge and skills to identify, prevent and report cases of corruption, with the goal of helping create a fairer healthcare system. The activity is being carried out as part of the project “A Stronger System for Fairer Protection: Reducing Corruption in Healthcare,” implemented by the Association for Emancipation, Solidarity and Equality of Women – ESE.

The ESE Association stresses that confronting corruption must begin where it is encountered most often, namely in healthcare institutions. According to the association, this training for healthcare workers is one of the project’s main pillars and is expected to contribute both to raising awareness and to strengthening the readiness and capacities of healthcare staff to be on the front line in the fight against corrupt practices. They believe these professionals can be part of the solution rather than part of the problem harming the public healthcare system.

As part of this effort, a train-the-trainers session was held last week, attended by healthcare professionals who will later deliver the training in different regions of the country. Topics covered during the session included ethics in practice, the relationship between medical ethics and corruption in healthcare, the gender dimension of corruption, as well as reporting mechanisms, protection and institutional accountability.

Professor Gordana Panova, one of the lecturers in the training, says corruption is a phenomenon present in healthcare and often begins in small forms, usually to secure faster services or higher-quality care. She stresses that for this reason healthcare professionals must play a key role in opposing it. According to her, their work should be grounded every day in charity, respect for patients’ interests and rights, justice, confidentiality and professional responsibility, thereby helping prevent corruption.

Anti-corruption expert Liljana Cvetanoska also underlines that it is essential to recognize the different forms of corruption in healthcare, since the measures that need to be taken depend on the nature of the specific case. She explains that different approaches are required when it comes to gifts or payments from patients, or requests for money from healthcare workers, while corruption in public procurement presents an entirely different situation. According to her, citizens do not confront this form directly and often have little knowledge of it, but its impact on the quality of healthcare services is nevertheless very serious.

Participants from the healthcare sector described the training as useful and easily applicable in everyday practice. Especially important for them were topics related to identifying corruption risks, its gender aspects, sexual torture, equal treatment of patients, as well as reporting and protection mechanisms.

The project “A Stronger System for Fairer Protection: Reducing Corruption in Healthcare” is being implemented by the ESE Association with the support of Expertise France through Agence française de developpement. It is a national initiative built around three main directions: training healthcare professionals to strengthen their role in fighting corrupt practices, raising citizens’ awareness to recognize and report corruption, and reforming policies and processes in healthcare.