NEW DELHI: India’s healthcare system is riddled with corruption and the national drug approvals agency is a “snakepit of vested interests”, the health minister said, backing a rising tide of criticism by doctors of unethical practices.
Harsh Vardhan’s remarks came after leading doctors and advocacy groups joined hands to eradicate corruption from the $74bn healthcare industry, forming anti-graft panels at hospitals and writing open letters to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.
“I am more aware than anybody else of the corruption that is eating into the entrails of every aspect of governance, including the health system,” Vardhan, a doctor, told Indian Express newspaper. “I have inherited a poisoned chalice.”
Practices such as taking kickbacks for referring patients to a particular test centre or receiving gifts from companies for prescribing their drugs are widespread.
India this week capped the prices of more than 100 drugs used to treat diseases ranging from diabetes to HIV, in a move likely to hit the profit margins of drug firms.
Though the industry is growing at 15 percent annually, according to consulting firm PwC, public spending on healthcare has stagnated at about 1 percent of GDP for years. That compares to 3 percent in China and 8.3 percent in the US, according to a World Bank database for 2012.
The anti-corruption debate gained momentum after Australian doctor David Berger wrote a column for British Medical Journal (BMJ) in May, describing his encounters with corrupt professionals when he worked as a volunteer at a charitable hospital in the Himalayas.
Several Indian doctors and editors of BMJ followed up with their articles in late June, exposing the sleaze problem faced by patients and the industry.
Berger’s column, ‘Corruption ruins the doctor-patient relationship in India’, said kickbacks and bribes oil every part of the healthcare apparatus. “It is no surprise that investigations and procedures are abused as a means of milking patients,” Berger wrote.
The column made Samiran Nundy, 76, a leading gastroenterologists, feel “ashamed”, forcing him to put his experiences into writing after working in the public and private sectors for almost four decades.
Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, a multi-speciality facility in the capital, has formed a committee for ethical practices under Nundy, listing new guidelines for doctors to curb corruption.
“Many doctors may be opposed to having this body because they think it will interfere with their practice,” Nundy said.
The All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi has launched an initiative ‘Society for Less Investigative Medicine’ to deter doctors from advising patients to take unnecessary tests.
Advocacy group People’s Health Movement has written an open letter to Vardhan, seeking intervention to eliminate corruption from the private health sector.
The response to articles has overwhelmed BMJ’s India editor Anita Jain, who said the journal will continue to focus on editorials to raise awareness of such practices. “This (new panel) is for the next generation. Merit should be rewarded, not crookedness,” Nundy said. Reuters
