Posted by Damjan DeNoble
Dan Bilefsky, one of my favorite European correspondents and expert on Balkan politics, wrote a cringe inducing article on corruption among Romanian doctors, here. A heartbreaking story, about a woman who bribed her doctors, nurses, and fringe medical staff ahead of her delivery, but still ended up giving delivery alone in hospital, caps the piece at beginning and end.
“Alina Lungu, 30, says she did everything necessary to ensure a healthy pregnancy in Romania: She ate organic food, swam daily and bribed her gynecologist with an extra €200 in cash, paid in monthly increments of €25 handed over discreetly in white envelopes.
Another bribe of €25, or about $32, went to a nurse to guarantee an epidural. Even the orderly reaped an extra €10 to make sure he didn’t drop her from the stretcher.
But on the day of her delivery, she says, her gynecologist never arrived. Twelve hours into labor, she was left alone in her room for an hour. When a doctor appeared, the umbilical cord was wrapped twice around her baby’s head and had nearly suffocated him. He was blind and deaf and had suffered severe brain damage.”
This is a very well written, vivid example of the dangers of bribery in hospitals, and I am posting it here to add to our continuing coverage of under the table payments to doctors in Asian countries like Vietnam, China, Indonesia, and Malaysia, undergoing a transition from a state controlled, market driven healthcare system, to a consumer driven model of healthcare. The common strand is that the compensation scheme for doctors is not changing, while people all around them engaging in private industry are seeing their salaries and standard of living go up. This in turn, is breeding a lot of resentment in the medical community and reinforcing practices left over from socialist days; outdated healthcare models are left stagnate as state dollars flock to profitable new private industries; and public health deteriorates and becomes a barrier to continued growth.
Anybody out there have stories of bad experiences with doctors soliciting bribes?
About the Author
