By David Li, bostonese.com
Boston, Feb. 25, 2014, — A change.org petition to World Health Organization (WHO) titled Please investigate doctor and nurse beating/killing incidents in China was started earlier today. It calls WHO to help Chinese government identify root causes and find solutions to the violent confrontation between patients and doctors at many hospitals in China. It cited a couple rent such incidents in the petition.
Military police was brought on site after Dr. Wang Yunjie was killed in a hospital in Oct. 2013 in Wenling, Zhejiang province last year.
|
|
The idea of starting the petition came from a group of Chinese doctors who are currently visiting scholars at various hospitals in Boston. “Hopefully, with this petition and pressure from outside, Chinese government can do more to address the root causes of the violence toward doctors and nurses,” said one Chinese doctor from Shanghai.
You can sign the petition by clicking here. The following is the text of the petition.
In 2012, 11 violent attacks on medical staff occurred in hospitals in eight provinces and municipalities, killing seven people and injuring 28, including doctors, patients and a security guard, according to a joint statement issued by China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission and the Ministry of Public Security in October 2013.
There were certainly more incidents that were not reported or counted in hospitals in China in 2012, and the hostile attitude that encourages violence against doctors and nurses is still pervasive in China. A well-known TV host Wang Mudi in Guangdong province also threatened to kill the nurse on China’s popular social media website weibo.com just because the nurse tried four times to find the blood vessle when his girlfriend vistied a hopital to get IV injection on Feb. 22, 2014. Mr. Wang has since apologized under the critism from the public.
The situation has not improved since 2012 even though Chinese government has tried various measures to improve the situation. Just days ago, a doctor was killed by a patient in northeastern China’s Heilongjiang Province according to comfirmed media reports. Incrasing security at hospitals along doesn’t seem to solve the problem.
We petition WHO to send a team of experts to China to investigate the situation. We believe experts from WHO would be able to help Chinese government identify the root causes of violence toward medical staff and make nessesary policy changes to ensure safety of medical staff and all patients in China hospitals.
|
|