The EL PERIÓDICO investigation that has uncovered payments from pharmaceutical companies to the director of the Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO) has reached Parliament. The Department of Health last Monday opened an information file on the private activity of Ramon Salazar i Solerafter this newspaper communicated the information about these to the department charges (14,036.09 euros during 2022), which had not been declared to the Transparency Portal of the Generalitat as is the obligation of all senior positions in the Catalan Administration. Both the opening of the information file and the fact that two political forces – the PSC and the CUP – have requested clarification of the matter in separate petitions before the Catalan Chamber indicate the proper functioning of democratic institutions in the event of any suspicion of irregularity in the public administration. Equally suspicious is that a company founded by Salazar and managed by his wife organizes medical days sponsored by pharmaceutical companies. The maximum rigor and diligence is to be expected in resolving the issue as soon as possible, and in settling the part of responsibility, if any, for possible surveillance and control errors that have been committed.
It is now up to the Government to establish whether the director of the ICO has incurred any incompatibility, as the data collected by this newspaper indicates. He Minister of Health, Manel Balcells, He assured that they will make “the decisions that have to be made” if it is confirmed that the compatibility criteria with Salazar have been breached. “If there are things done wrong, we will not tolerate it,” she added. Although public officials can carry out certain private activities, the danger of personal interests influencing the decisions made by institutions forces them to be especially strict in setting limits. Above all, in an area as sensitive as health, we must demand maximum honesty in the relationship between physicians and the pharmaceutical industry. The discontent expressed yesterday by the unions demonstrates the concern, also on the part of medical workers, to maintain ethics in their profession.
Regardless of whether or not there was incompatibility in the case of Salazar, what is clear is that He did not declare to Transparència these income obtained outside of his salary in the ICO, and that he should have done it. Transparency is one of the most effective weapons to fight corruption, at all levels, and governments and advanced societies are defined by their ability to guarantee it. Spain passed a law on transparency, access to public information and good governance in 2013, and a year later the Catalan law was passed. They are regulations that strengthen the democratic and legal State, and non-compliance must be prosecuted because it opens the door to practices that should not be tolerated in any way.