The government's first structural reform will be a new public procurement commission in the health sector that will comprise key people from the finance and police ministries and the State Prosecutor's Office (DORH), Health Minister Rajko Ostojic told Croatian Television on Sunday.
He said that two weeks ago he asked deputy prime ministers Branko Grcic and Radimir Cacic, the ministers of finance and the police and the state prosecutor "to give me their key people, assistants, who will supervise public procurement together with the health ministry."
"That's the best prevention when the DORH is on the commission," Ostojic said, adding that the result would be a combined public procurement system, "the government's first structural reform."
Speaking of the Pfizer scandal rocking the Croatian health sector, he said it was a shame that the sector and all Croatian doctors should have their reputations sullied because of several corrupt doctors named in US court documents in the case.
"That simply has to be cleared up," the minister said, stressing that he would do everything to that end. "Croatian doctors are mentioned in certain commissions and it can be very clearly reconstructed who sat on which commission, who used their influence so that someone's drugs should or should not be put on a list," he said, describing corruption in the health sector as "the pits."
The scandal was uncovered when the media reported that the US pharmaceutical company Pfizer, in order to avoid a trial, had agreed to pay a US$ 60 million fine for bribing doctors in several countries, including Croatia.
