Doctor gets 11 years jail for taking kickbacks

A court in Chongqing sentenced a doctor to 11 years imprisonment for accepting bribes of more than 1 million yuan ($164,000), China News Service reported on Thursday.

Liang Fa, director of a medical department in a local hospital, was convicted of taking 1.07 million yuan in bribes from medical sales representatives from 2003 to 2013.

Doctors taking kickbacks has long been a problem for China's hospitals, as sales of medicine account for a large proportion of profit for many hospitals, and some doctors take bribes from medical companies to prescribe more of their products.