In his address at the opening session of the symposium, which was held yesterday by the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), in collaboration with the Saudi Health Council (SHC) under the title: “The Role of Health Sector in Promoting Integrity and Fighting Corruption”, His Excellency the Minister of Health, Eng. Khalid bin Abdulaziz Al-Falih, highlighted the active role in maintaining the nation and its achievements, and extended his thanks to all those who contributed to the launch of this symposium.
He highlighted that the main factor in the health sector should be integrity, and its negligence may jeopardize our health and even our souls, by an entity which is originally responsible for and concerned with maintaining our health and souls. Besides, he underlined the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) determination to confront the negligence in integrity, saying: “Today I can say with confidence and determination that we are witnessing an era of decisiveness and determination, as we see the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques with an iron fist never compromises nor tolerate in confronting the corruption, the matter which has been observed in his many occasions. Hence, we will not keep a place among us at the MOH for those who do not adhere all the time to the highest standards of integrity and honesty, meanwhile we will stand firmly and decisively against any negligence or laxity about honesty. Thus, we will never allow any one of the heartless people to undermine the efforts exerted by thousands of the MOH's loyal employees nor to distort the wonderful image drawn by their great efforts”.
Furthermore, Al-Falih pointed out that the anti-corruption strategy comprises a number of axes, including prevention axis by means of raising awareness about values, highlighting the importance of commitment to integrity and the damages resulting from the conflict of interests and anti-honesty behaviors, as well as determining their indications, in order to be able to discover them earlier. He said that the MOH will oblige all its concerned employees to sign a document of disclosure and that there is no conflict of interest between them and the MOH. He added that the aforementioned strategy axes includes the alarm axis or what is internationally so-called “whistle blowing”, by means of providing channels of notification for everyone who sees a defect to blow the whistle of alert, while ensuring secrecy for the informer and even encouraging, appreciating and rewarding him.
The axes also include an axis about developing regulations for all types of work at the MOH, in such a way that ensures transparency and provides no way for the occurrence of corruption cases, that is to be added to an axis for strengthening the supervisory systems, audit and investigation methods and mechanism of submitting irregularities, including the implementation of legal punishments. The last axis is about building partnership with parties such as the NACC and other supervisory bodies for fighting corruption of all types.