Skip to main content

Eurasianet

Main Menu

  • Regions
  • Topics
  • Media
  • About
  • Search
  • Newsletter
  • русский
  • Support us
X

Caucasus

Armenia
Azerbaijan
Georgia

Central Asia

Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Tajikistan
Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan

Conflict Zones

Abkhazia
Nagorno Karabakh
South Ossetia

Eastern Europe

Belarus
Moldova
Russia
The Baltics
Ukraine

Eurasian Fringe

Afghanistan
China
EU
Iran
Mongolia
Turkey
United Kingdom
United States
X

Environment

Economy

Politics

Kazakhstan's Bloody January 2022
Kyrgyzstan 2020 unrest

Security

Society

American diplomats in Central Asia
Arts and Culture
Coronavirus
Student spotlight
X

Visual Stories

Podcast
Video

Blogs

Tamada Tales
The Bug Pit

Podcasts

EurasiaChat
Expert Opinions
The Central Asianist
X
You can search using keywords to narrow down the list.
Kazakhstan, Central Asia

Kazakhstan: Medical app mired in corruption scandal

Deputy Health Minister Olzhas Abishev was arrested earlier this week.

Almaz Kumenov Aug 7, 2020
Digitization has proven a lucrative area for fraud. (Photo: Government handout) Digitization has proven a lucrative area for fraud. (Photo: Government handout)

An app introduced by Kazakhstan’s government to ease access to healthcare has become target of claims that medics are registering fake consultations to defraud the state insurance fund.

Tengri news website reported on August 6, citing prosecutors, that around 12,000 false entries, which saw the state billed an additional $180,000, were entered into Damumed digital database over the space of six months. The abuse came to light after users of the app began complaining of finding things like doctor appointments that they had neither requested nor attended in their personal records.

Damumed was launched in 2018 as part of a broader Digital Kazakhstan national program initiated by former President Nursultan Nazarbayev a year earlier. The intention was to improve access to medical services by creating a unified resource available to patients, medical practitioners and the government alike.

On July 31, however, Nur-Sultan resident Arai Ordabayeva took to Facebook to say that when she consulted her account on the Damumed mobile application, she found records for treatments that she had never received. Her attempts to get clarification from officials were ignored, so she decided to go public.

In the comments below her post, hundreds of people shared similar experiences and screenshots showing inexistent consultations. That soon prompted a response from Asset Issekeshev, a presidential advisor and the secretary of Kazakhstan’s national security council.

“These facts will be checked,” he wrote.

It was later reported that the General Prosecutor's Office has been charged with investigating alleged forgery of records in the Damumed database.

The developer of the app, Damu Center for Information Technology, wrote on its Facebook page that it had been receiving complaints in this vein since the start of the year and that it had passed on those reports to the Health Ministry. It is not yet clear that there was any follow-up from the ministry.

Health Ministry spokesman Bagdat Kodzhakhmetov told privately owned TV station Channel 31 that measures are being explored to adopt stricter control over medical personnel. Those remarks imply the government may seek to cast the bulk of blame onto rank-and-file personnel, although it is likely that whatever fraud occurred could only have been perpetrated with the involvement of management.

Meanwhile, the Social Health Insurance Fund, the state body responsible for reimbursing the cost of paid treatments to hospitals and polyclinics, has said that the facilities found to have engaged in registered fake consultations could be fined amounts equivalent to 300 percent of the falsely claimed monies.

Earlier this week, local media reported on the arrest of Deputy Health Minister Olzhas Abishev, whose portfolio included digitalization of the sector. As Vremya newspaper reported, Abishev took the lead on promoting Damumed and he is now facing charges of embezzling 127 million tenge (more than $300,000) while in the process of enacting the national digital strategy.

 

Almaz Kumenov is an Almaty-based journalist.

Sign up for Eurasianet's free weekly newsletter. Support Eurasianet: Help keep our journalism open to all, and influenced by none.

Related

Aeroflot poised to return to Kazakhstan despite legal risks
Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan complete border delimitation process
Why Central Asian journalists hide their names

Popular

Azerbaijani embassy in Iran comes under deadly attack
Heydar Isayev
Aeroflot poised to return to Kazakhstan despite legal risks
Fight or flight: Tbilisi and Kyiv caught in another round of tensions
Nini Gabritchidze

Eurasianet

  • About
  • Team
  • Contribute
  • Republishing
  • Privacy Policy
  • Corrections
  • Contact
Eurasianet © 2023