Hospital staff attacks to be given priority: top prosecutor

Cases of violence against medical personnel will be treated as major and sensitive and will be given priority to speed up arrests and prosecutions, China’s top prosecutor announced Friday.

“Violence against medical personnel, regardless of its causes, is ruthless. Such crimes are greatly hazardous to society and must be severely punished,” Huang He, head of the inspection and supervision department at the Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP), said Friday.

There were a total of 115 cases of doctors being murdered or assaulted in 2014, news site thepaper.cn reported.

Despite a pledge of zero-tolerance of such crimes made by the Ministry of Public Security in 2013, the “angels in white” sometimes still end up blood red instead.

In May, Chen Zhongwei, a retired doctor in South China’s Guangdong Province, was fatally stabbed by someone who had been his patient 25 years earlier. The attacker apparently blamed Chen for his teeth being discolored.

Chen’s death led to a joint regulation being introduced by several central government departments which assigned armed police officers to hospitals.