Party and State: China to Beef Up Hospital Security

Saturday, October 26, 2013

China to Beef Up Hospital Security

The medical industry in China just can't get an even break. With doctors being bribed by drugmakers fighting to get their meds on the shelves in pharmacies, the story of man forced to amputate his own leg (and later regretted it) illustrates the pisspoor state that Chinese hospitals are in. Prized appointment slots with top flight specialists are openly sold to the highest bidder outside of the clinics they operate in.

Violent attacks on doctors are causing concerns to the Politburo, not least because they scare away much needed medical graduates already put off by the low wages and God-awful working conditions that they'll have to endure for most of their career. As far back as 2011, Chinese patients seeking recompense for botched operations have been thwarted by the dodgy legal system that blocks, stalls, and smears the victim. The end result, predictably, is a violent one.

Plans were announced this week that hospital security is to beefed up in a national shake up aimed at preventing the nasty occupational hazard of departmental heads being hacked to death on their own wards.

Chinese medical writers have been quick to heave a sigh of "meh". Zhu Youdi rightly blamed the violence on "a crisis of mutual trust and mutual communication between hospital and patients."

If a doctor succeeds in curing them, "patients are happy and willing to give bribes. But if a doctor receives bribes but fails to cure the patient, they lost both life and money, and the relatives will be extremely angry, it's impossible to ask them to behave in a rational manner," he said.

The new measures fail to tackle the problem, Zhu said. Only a thorough overhaul of China's medical system will reduce hospital violence, he said.

As the increasingly draconian laws that have neutered China's social networking sites have demonstrated, the trust of the people is getting harder and harder to come by these days.