2023-08-17 16:35:00
Pharmaceutical companies are also suspected of corruption in China. Here’s a look inside a company in Heilongjiang Province
Foto: dpa/Xinhua/Wang Jianwei
There are few industries as prone to corruption as Chinese healthcare. But what was previously usually acknowledged with a resigned shrug of the shoulders now ends up in court more and more often. The most spectacular cases even make it onto the front pages of the state newspapers almost every day: the vice president of a hospital in north-eastern Liaoning is said to have accepted the equivalent of 400,000 euros from a pharmaceutical company in order to help it get orders. In southern Yunnan, a senior physician asked himself to pay around two million euros so that his hospital would buy medical equipment from a specific manufacturer.
In late July, the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Disciplinary Commission launched an unprecedented anti-corruption campaign in the healthcare sector. Among other things, the local authorities were asked to intensify their criminal prosecution and in particular to target high-ranking officials.
Unsurprisingly, countless heads were soon rolling: by mid-August alone, more than 150 heads of public hospitals had been investigated, more than twice as many as last year. A number of top managers from drug manufacturers have also been the focus of regulators and have lost their jobs.
On the financial markets, the actions of the authorities led to a drastic slump in share prices. According to calculations by Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, market values of around nine billion euros were destroyed in the first two weeks of the anti-corruption campaign alone.
In anticipatory obedience, industry associations have already canceled at least eleven medical conferences at short notice this month, according to the Chinese online medium The Paper. Although no official reasons were given, a connection with the current anti-corruption campaign is obvious: in the past, health conferences were used by the pharmaceutical industry to distribute bribes in the form of lecture fees. Because in the Chinese hospitals, the doctors not only issue prescriptions, but mostly have their own pharmacies, where they can choose the medicines sold in detail.
In a study published in February, researchers from the renowned Peking University examined the reasons for the widespread corruption. Above all, the authors of the study blamed the financial pressure on doctors. “In our district hospital, over 60 percent of the doctors cannot support their families by relying solely on their salaries,” one doctor is quoted as saying. A senior doctor says: “If most of the colleagues on my ward receive bribes, I can’t refuse them. I’ll be isolated if I don’t follow their lead.”
Accordingly, the current anti-corruption campaign is primarily aimed at fighting the symptoms, but not the cause. Because without better financing of the health system in the People’s Republic, it is unlikely that there will be any sustainable improvements.
It is noteworthy that many publicists are quite skeptical about the measures taken by the authorities. Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of the nationalist Global Times, warns, for example: “We should comprehensively ensure that the fight against corruption is carried out within the legal framework. This is not a so-called mass movement’. His criticism alludes to the radical campaigns of the 1960s under state founder Mao Tsetung, which went wildly beyond their intended goal.
Such a fear is entirely justified. A veritable witch hunt against health workers can already be observed on the online platform Weibo. Above all, countless doctors are pilloried by the users by naming them – and accused of serious corruption without any evidence.
A number of innocent people are likely to be affected: A cardiologist, for example, reports in an online post that he was recently reported by a patient for alleged corruption and as a result had his annual bonus canceled. The allegation was: A patient thanked the hospital team after an operation with a few lunch boxes and milk coffee.
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