Fraud and corruption in healthcare are poorly documented and hardly professionally discussed amongst stakeholders in healthcare. Moreover: from a global perspective, fraud and corruption in healthcare are barely tackled efficiently and effectively. Whereas the nature and the extent of fraud and corruption in other areas of life are well-studied and countered accordingly, this is far less the case when it comes to the occurrence and the consequences of these phenomena in healthcare. Worldwide however , healthcare fraud and corruption are lucrative lines of work wherein large amounts of money, care and resources needed to sustain and improve public health are essentially being rerouted toward greedy and immoral individuals and groups , preventing patients from having access to the healthcare they need, staying ill longer or eventually dying. This session will approach the problem of fraud and corruption in healthcare in 4 keynote talks . The first will elaborate on the definition, the nature and the extent of healthcare fraud and corruption worldwide. A comprehensive method to tackle these phenomena, as promoted by the European Healthcare Fraud and Corruption Network (EHFCN) ,will be presented with reference to the challenges encountered and to successful international best practices. The second keynote will expand on the financial costs of healthcare fraud and why they should be assessed and reviewed and measures should be developed to pre-empt them and improve inefficiency just like in almost any other area like staffing costs or procurement costs. Next, the third keynote will focus on the way the South African Healthcare Forensic Management Unit (HFMU) is to curb the incidences of fraud and other inappropriate behavior which contribute significantly to the cost spiral in health insurance. Red flags and ongoing problems in the South-African healthcare system are raised and fraud preventative measures will be presented. Finally the 4th keynote will identify healthcare fraud as one of the 10 major causes of inefficiency, resulting in “waste” of up to 30-40 % of all health resources. Strategies to tackle fraud and “waste” will be presented by demonstrating the effectiveness of 3 comprehensive actions : assessment or evaluation (prevention), information or communication and finally control or sanction (repression). A representative selection of risk exercises conducted in Belgium will show the importance of assessing the existence and the cost of waste (not only fraud and error) as well as the significance of analysing not only quantified and statistical evidence in order to detect incorrect billing but also to evaluate the purely medical aspects of the scope as to assess the cost of inappropriate care.