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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Fight against healthcare graft to focus on India -Rema Nagarajan

Fight against healthcare graft to focus on India -Rema Nagarajan

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published Published on Jun 30, 2014   modified Modified on Jun 30, 2014
-The Times of India
 

NEW DELHI: British Medical Journal (BMJ) has announced the launch of a campaign against corruption in medicine, which will begin with its focus on India. The journal urged people to join its international fight back against kickbacks.

The editorial in BMJ regarding the campaign stated that corruption in healthcare was a complex challenge that medical professionals have failed to deal with, either by choosing to enrich themselves, turning a blind eye, or considering it too difficult. Transparency International had concluded that the Indian healthcare sector, is the second most corrupt organization that an ordinary citizen had to encounter (next to the police force).

The editorial stated that though India was not alone in pervasive corruption in healthcare, the journal believed that if corruption could be defeated in India it would be possible to tackle it for millions of people in other countries with similar ecosystems.

 

It is estimated that 10-25% of global public spending on procurement of health was lost through corruption. The total global spending on healthcare is estimated to be more than $7 trillion per year. In 2011, it was estimated that the US alone lost between $82bn and $272bn to medical embezzlement, mostly related to its health insurance system.

 

"India has a lack of external accountability and oversight of both public and private health sectors. Most doctors work in the underfunded and inefficient public sector because it is a secure job with time bound promotions and little supervision. However, those in much better paid private sector jobs are incentivised to generate business for their employers by overinvestigation and overtreatment of patients who are at their mercy both medically and financially. Private medicine has flourished in India because of a weak regulatory climate with no standards to monitor quality or ethics," stated the editorial.

Dr Samiran Nundy, eminent gastrointestinal surgeon and editor in chief of the journal Current Medicine Research & Practice, in an editorial in the same issue of the BMJ identified the main reasons for corruption in medicine in India as lack of information to users, excessive red tape, shortages of doctors and healthcare supplies, poor salaries in the public sector and finally poor management and supervision.

He also urged the creation of national watchdogs to tackle corruption in healthcare as was done in the UK and the US, which was able to bring down corruption substantially. Dr Nundy concluded by saying that when a corrupt doctor or health worker was caught, the person should be subjected to exemplary punishment as in the present scheme, the corrupt were fairly certain of not being found out, let alone punished for their misdeeds.


The Times of India, 30 June, 2014, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Fight-against-healthcare-graft-to-focus-on-India/articleshow/37499765.cms


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