Police in hospitals to protect medical staff from patients
On average every day angry patients assault medical staff and damage equipment in about 30 hospitals. Their complaint is of poor and slow medical care that often leaves out in the cold those who cannot pay. Authorities choose to post police inside hospitals to protect the personnel from patients.
Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – China's health ministry has called for police to be posted at local hospitals to protect medical workers from violent attacks by disgruntled patients and their relatives. Last year alone almost 10,000 attacks by angry patients were recorded.
Health Ministry spokesman Mao Qunan yesterday said the police was asked to stop the violence and protect hospital staff and equipment.
In China most people do not have access to free health care and it is not uncommon for hospitals to turn away patients who cannot pay, including people brought to emergency rooms.
Official figures show that in 2006 some 9,831 attacks took place as a result of disputes between medical staff and patients and their families causing more than 200 million yuan (US$ 26 million) worth of damage to hospital property and injuring more than 5,500 medical workers.
Here is one example among many. Last November the emergency room in a hospital in Guangan (Sichuan) refused to perform a gastric lavage (stomach pump) on a four-year-old child (who had ingested pesticide) because his family could not pay US$ 95 in medical fee. The child died.
In December, doctors and nurses at Shanxia hospital in Shenzhen (Guangdong) were forced to wear hard hats on their rounds after being jostled and spat at for days by relatives seeking compensation over a patient's death.
Last year’s figures represent a significant increase over 2002 when 5,093 violent incidents and 2,604 injuries among medical personnel were recorded.
Now the health ministry wants around the clock police protection to prevent incidents. The plan has already been implanted in 14 hospitals in Wuyishan (Fujian).
Some experts are not convinced though that such measures are the best way to go. In their view, the real problem lies in the poor quality hospital care patients receive and in medical malpractice. Patients’ anger and violence are a direct result of this and would not occur if they were better treated.
An official study carried out in December 2005 does indicate that 48.9 per cent of Chinese do not go to hospitals when sick because of high costs.
What is more, public funding for health care in mainland china, which represented 6 per cent of the government budget in the eighties and nineties, dropped to 4 per cent in 2002 or 120 billion yuan (about US$ 12 per person per year). (PB)
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