Bribery is the main challenge in procurement and financial management of healthcare projects.
This is according to the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission annual report for the financial year 2021-2022.
Project initiation stage was said to have attracted the highest instances of bribery as indicated by health staff.
This is followed by award of tenders and implementation of project.
The Twalib Mbarak led commission in conjunction with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime carried out a corruption and unethical conduct assessment in the Kenya HealthCare Project.
The study was of procurement and financial management practices.
It's sample comprised of 25 counties with 1,280 healthcare staff, 500 members of the public, 150 contractors and 56 key informants drawn from county Health and Finance departments.
About 45 per cent of contractors involved in health projects indicated that it is common for them to pay some irregular payments or gifts to get things done
In fact, 30.6 per cent of the contractors knew in advance what was to be offered as an irregular payment or gifts.
During the year under study, the average bribe paid in healthcare projects was approximately Sh396,000.
The highest amount of bribe paid was Sh3 million, while the lowest was Sh5,000.
“About 23 per cent of contractors indicated that they gave one to 10 per cent, eight per cent said they gave 11-20 per cent while three per cent gave 21-50 percent of their revenue as unofficial payment,” the report reads.
A further, 13 per cent of the healthcare staff interviews indicated that there were instances of undue influence by external actors in the procurement processes of health projects
It was revealed that procurement processes were mostly influenced by governors (20.8 per cent), MCAs (17.2 per cent) and MPs (8.1 per cent).
As a result, half of the members of public involved in the study indicated that award of contracts were not fair and transparent.
In another revelation, 18 per cent of contractors indicated that they were aware of companies owned by public officers that were undertaking healthcare projects.
The cadre of public officers that mostly owned companies that sought procurement opportunities in healthcare projects were MCAs (10.8 per cent), chief officers (10.8 per cent) and Health executives (9.8 per cent).