South Korea deploys military, public doctors to strike-hit hospitals
Seoul: South Korea will start deploying military physicians and doctors from public health centres to strike-hit hospitals on March 11 to help care for patients affected by the walkout of nearly 12,000 trainee doctors from 100 hospitals over government reform plans.
Twenty military surgeons, along with 138 public health doctors, will be assigned to 20 hospitals for four weeks, Health Minister Cho Kyoohong said at a meeting on March 10.
The number of military physicians called on to help so far is only a small fraction of the roughly 2,400 military doctors, according to a Defence Ministry briefing.
The government has denied that the walkout, which started on Feb 20, has caused a full-blown health crisis, but some hospitals have had to turn away patients and delay medical procedures.
As at the morning of March 8, nearly 12,000 protesting doctors at 100 hospitals had left their posts in a dispute over a government plan to increase medical school admissions, Health Ministry data showed, defying pressure from the authorities to return to work.
The South Korean authorities have been trying to coax the doctors to return to work by warning them that their medical licences could be suspended but, so far, appear to have had little success with the tactic.
The Health Ministry said notices had been sent to more than 4,900 doctors as at March 8 to notify them that the authorities could start suspending licences if they did not explain their action. Doctors who returned to work before the administrative measure to suspend licences was complete would be “given leniency”, Mr Cho told KBS Radio on March 11.
The government has the power to order doctors back to work if it deems there is a serious risk to lives and public health.
The government has said the plan to increase annual medical school admissions by 2,000 starting from 2025 is vital to remedying a shortage of doctors in one of the world’s fastest-ageing societies.