“Corruption is what has not allowed us to improve more in quality”: Superintendent of Health

The health system in Colombia became relevant during the pandemic, so much so that the national government had to increase its investment to remedy debts that exceeded 11 billion pesos, of which, according to the Ministry of Health, 6.2 billion have been covered.

“We received accounts for 11 billion pesos in arrears that had severely affected IPS and hospitals,” said Femando Ruiz, Minister of Health a few weeks ago, and argued that it would really be 7.3 billion, because the surplus was due, which did not exist or were already paid. Currently, “we have paid $6.2 billion and before August we will close with $7.3,” said the official. That means saving the historical past of ten years in which the system and institutions were carrying brutal debts.”

Despite the efforts that have been made to make the system work properly, according to the superintendent of health, Fabio Aristizábal, the problem remains the corruption that has been created around the centers of care and that today has left professionals without payment, clinics and hospitals closed, EPS bankrupt and so on.

In the dialogue he held with the Colombian media, he also said that over the past 10 years more than 70 forms of looting have been found to steal health money and that the mafias that do so are made up of rulers, managers, lawyers, administrators and countless characters.

“In recent years we have discovered more than 70 ways of looting to steal health money. This is like the Hydra of Greek mythology: every time we cut off one head, two appear to it,” said the superintendent.

An example is a case that sounded again on April 3, in which four people were convicted of using health money for political campaign in La Guajira. The act of corruption would take place in 2011, following the conclusion of a contract between the Albanian Mayor's Office, in La Guajira, and the San Rafael Hospital. The 18.9 billion pesos agreement sought to develop a health program to prevent mortality among children and pregnant mothers.

The evidence collected by the investigating body showed that the beneficiaries of the multiple contracts had to meet three requirements: to have their citizenship card registered in order to vote in Albania, to be followers of the current candidate for the governorate and to accept a lower payment than established in the orders for the provision of services.

In this regard, Aristizábal made an important warning about the consequences that corruption has for the system: “We have found more than 400 public hospitals that are in crisis due to poor administrations and we have had to intervene forcibly in 17 of them to start recovering them.”

He concluded: “It would be useless to change the rules, the model, the system itself and even the laws, if we are to allow the same actors who continue to seize health resources to persist.”

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