Recently one of the most experienced and well known oncology surgeons in Tirana’s main hospital “Mother Teresa” was arrested on bribery charges. The surgeon’s arrest was treated as a high profile case by the media, and rightly so.
The police cuffed him in public as he was coming out of a restaurant near his job. According to the media the doctor did not object as he was presented with the charges and then escorted out. The surgeon had been under investigation for several months after former patients and people had reported him for bribery.
The 58 year old, Agrim Kraja, has distinguished himself as an oncological surgeon with some 30 years of experience. However, the growing number of bribery accusations against him could not go unheeded for long, which is what brought about the courts decision to issue an arrest warrant in his name.
The event brought about mixed reactions by both the media, public and health officials. For the media this was another case of corruption in the health sector where hospital service conditions seem to be unable to remove the mark of corruption in all levels. Meanwhile, health officials and hospital staff had mixed reactions as well. Health ministry officials condemned the way that the doctor was publicly arrested (comparable to the arrest of a criminal) as it diminishes the dignity and role of the doctor as a public health servant, whom demands respect by all. On the other side, those who spoke in his defense against the charges were few.
For the public, including myself, the event hopefully will serve to bring some much needed attention to this plague of our society in a sphere where all of us are vulnerable – our health security. Let’s hope that something good will come out of this.
Please feel free to share your opinions or health service stories here.
Hey brother!!!! How are you? You should know the answer! 😀
doctors are so currepted and all medical system is messed up 🙁
corruption is major problem over there
They can’t do it otherwise. I know well what you’re talking about, it’s the same here. But I try to understand them because doctors’ salaries are miserable, they can’t live with such low wages AND cure patients!
Doctors got to have their mind clear in order to operate patients and treat them and how can a doctor have his mind clear when he knows that he has problems at home?! So bribing doctors has become a way of life here in Romania at least because the health system has little money and it’s the least that we can do to support the doctors (after all we trust them with our lives!).
Otherwise the good doctors will go to the E.U. and people will be treated by doctors who earn (and deserve) 300 Euro/month because that’s how much the state can afford to pay them. Think about it – who’s gonna study for 5-6 years in university and after that another 5 years of stage of practice (I think every doctor has to go through a stage of practice, assisting an older doctor before he can excersise his job 100%) – only to get 3-400 Euro after that?!
Medicine is a sensible field, we can’t treat it like any other field, I think it’s good that people bribe doctors because otherwise there would be no doctors left in our countries. Engineers, other workers – we can do without them but doctors…
Dear Parmalat,
I was in Romania for a couple of days last year and I liked what I saw of your country, but from what I understand we have a lot of commonalities in economical and wages terms. I agree with you that doctors are not payed enough, even here in Albania, however, that does not give them the license to rob people because of their profession. If the system is unjust, then it is not just for the doctors, but also for the patients. So obviously there are deeper issues that need to be addressed in this whole situation.
Elvis