Anti-corruption courses cancelled

For now, the Health Ministry is cancelling its plans to hold anti-corruption training for medical workers, dropping the respective provision from its new bill on health-care providers, TASR learnt from the ministry's spokesman Peter Bubla on Tuesday. Having said that, the ministry remains convinced of the justifiability of the measure, but stressed the need for a broad discussion first. The task of introducing such a legal arrangement stems from the Government's action plan designed to bolster the rule of law. The individual courses were to be held by the Slovak Medical University (SZU). Health care unions head Peter Visolajsky has criticised the provision, saying that it's sad to have such an "absurd" proposal see the light of the day. He noted that the legislation aims to affect doctors and nurses in the wake of sandals for which responsibility lies mostly with hospital directors and ministry employees. The amendment to the Act on Health-Care Providers is to be debated by the Government at its session on Wednesday. Health care is viewed by the public as the area most infested with bribery - although some improvements have been recorded. As per a survey that Focus conducted for Transparency International Slovensko earlier this year, 21.8 percent of respondents have given some 'underhand' payments off the books to their doctor at some point over the past three years. This was down from 26 percent in 2015. Over 95 percent of people expressed their conviction that there's bribery in the health-care sector.