REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, SHANGHAI - China will introduce a blacklist of drugmakers and medical device manufacturers found to have paid bribes as it extends a crackdown on graft in the healthcare sector.

Healthcare departments will compile lists of offending manufacturers, agents and individuals, which will be published online, the National Health and Family Planning Commission said on Friday. The list will come into effect from the beginning of March.

Firms on the list once will be banned for two years from selling within the region where they were implicated. Those appearing on the list twice in five years will be banned nationally, also for two years.

Corruption in the healthcare sector has been in the spotlight this year with regulators investigating international and domestic drugs firms and milk powder companies for suspected graft. The most high-profile investigation involved British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline, significantly denting the firm's China sales and spooking doctors more widely to reduce interaction with sales teams.

With the country's healthcare spending forecast to nearly triple to 1 trillion USD by 2020 from 357 billion USD in 2011, according to consulting firm McKinsey, China is a magnet for makers of medicines and medical equipment.

Any medical practitioners who receive bribes will also be punished, and in severe cases have their medical licenses revoked. Corruption in China's medical sector is fueled in part by low base salaries for doctors and nurses at the country's 13,500 public hospitals.

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