In an Interim Report issued by Transparency International Srilanka on health sector corruption has revealed that there is widespread petty corruption, bribery and nepotism in government hospitals in the Colombo District.
Interim Report also revealed that the Patients have to spend considerable time to get the services and are therefore motivated to give bribes for easy access.
Overall majority of people are satisfied with health care, mostly because of free access to facilities and because all facilities were available to them. But some of them were not satisfied with services, mostly because of long queues, lack of kindness of the staff and shortage of prescribed medicines the study has revealed further.
Overall, the survey showed that petty corruption apparently is widespread in government hospitals: An alarming 98.5% of respondents were of the view that personal connections are necessary to get a better service. Nepotism seemed to be the most frequent form of corruption, but bribery was also widespread as reported in the household survey.
Workers who come into direct contact with the patients misuse their position by encouraging patients to offer money for the service. As a result, patients often cannot access services that should be free of charge as they have to pay informal payments to personnel report has said.