Based on the four recommendations points, as a public health professional, one can participate actively in building consensus on corruption’s scope. If it does not exist yet in his organization, he can give advice to the organization he’s working at if they are open to ideas.
Second, in agreeing on the consensus, it might need to define the acceptable form of corruption because it enables dysfunctional system works, for example, bribing officials could allow to access medications for a patient with a rare disease needing affordable drugs which is available in another country, but is refused by the government due to political reasons. However, when it comes to the issues of the organization, it must be rejected. For example, a hospital has a long waitlist for a critical surgery, and paying a bride could move a patient up the list. In this case, their management team should review their operation whether it needs more technical efficiency, or hiring more high-performance surgeons to speed up the queue. As the paper suggests, it is important to concentrate on what matters most.
Third, as a public health professional, it is vital to contribute to the corruption issues in the research communities and share data on anonymized corrupt practices to build evidence for effective interventions and increase the visibility of corruption in the health research databases.
Fourth, the research should not be limited to the health sector because corruption is a systemic problem not a localized problem. Therefore, an interdisciplinary approach is necessary to enable a holistic view of the problem.
I agree with these four recommendations, however, corruption could be either a social norm or unavoidable, especially where the rules of laws are not effective and the government itself is corrupt. In this case, the boundary of corruption should be defined. On the other hand, all these recommendations can only be exercised but limited within the organization.
In addition to these recommendations, there are some suggestions I would like to propose. First and foremost, each individual should be ethical himself first and be responsible for reporting corrupt practices if the doors are open. Secondly, but of equal importance, the government should strengthen anti-corruption and enforcement mechanisms because the government affects more or less every facet of public life. Finally, public health professionals should promote external audits from a small project to a large program to be implemented across all health organizations.