Opening up on Corruption: Health Department

A conference on corruption in the Health Department has agreed that, in order to combat the problem, it is necessary to reform the entire health system, adopt legislation on public procurement and establish a medical association. The conference was held in Belgrade on October 27, 2001, organised by Transparency International Serbia, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and the Centre for Economic Research of the Social Sciences Institute.

The director of the Dr Dragiša Mišovic Clinical Centre, Nada Kostic, told the conference that reforms in the health department would enable access to all specialists at competitive prices, similar to services available to civilian patients at the Military Medical Academy.

Public procurement legislation would prevent "big-time corruption" in the process of purchasing medical equipment, said TI Serbia Director Predrag Jovanovic. Under current legislation, health institutions sign contracts with suppliers of foreign medicines and equipment; they bill the Health Insurance Bureau which makes payments but has no actual control of the individual contracts signed.

Surgeon Milena Jaukovic emphasised that petty corruption is widespread.

"There are clinics in which only one or two physicians don't take money. It's a well-known fact in medical circles: corruption exists, even physicians pay money to physicians," said Jaukovic, adding that bribes were taken by everyone from doormen, through nurses to doctors. One way in which bribery could be fought, she added, would be to increase the present "outrageously low" salaries.

Jaukovic also described as a form of corruption the ways in which people secure senior medical officer positions, professorial appointments, doctor of sciences degrees, seats on boards and directorships.

Health Workers Union leader Stevan Djordjevic pointed out that the legislation does not provide any real opportunities. In his opinion, corruption would be eliminated by applying the principle "the money available is equal to the rights available".

"Theoretically, the same rights are available as during the time when we lived on foreign donations - Tito's loans - and when Belgrade was the centre of a Yugoslavia with a population of twenty million," added Djordjevic.

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