CORRUPTION BETWEEN DOCTORS AND PHARMACISTS: CRIMINAL LAW PROBLEMS OF COUNTERACTION

Abstract

The aim: To draw the attention of the scientific community to the problem of corruption between doctors and pharmacists and to find out the available possibilities to counteract it via criminal law measures. Materials and methods: The sources of this research include international legal acts and Ukrainian legislation; official reports of law enforcement agencies of Ukraine and other countries; NGO “Transparency International” studies; media materials; the results of a survey conducted using the Google Forms service; reports of the Accounting Chamber of Ukraine; judicial statistics data and materials of judicial practice in Ukraine, as well as special anti-corruption studies of Ukrainian and foreign scholars. The main methods used in the study are the legal-dogmatic method, the method of extrapolation, some methods of formal logic and open-source analysis of law-enforcement practice, as well as the survey method. Results: The problem of corrupt relationships between doctors and pharmacists is urgent both in Ukraine and abroad, and accordingly, requires an adequate legal assessment. Ukraine has the necessary criminal law tools to combat this negative phenomenon but uses them ineffectively. Conclusions: A corrupt relationship between a doctor and a pharmacist may occur at three levels. Corrupt forms of unlawful interaction between medical and pharmaceutical workers at all these levels are covered by the existing norms of the Criminal Code of Ukraine; there is no need to single out a special norm that would reflect the corrupt relationship between a doctor and a pharmacist.