Patients overcrowd hospitals as flu outbreak sweeps China

A MASS recently swept Beijing in what is being viewed by many media outlets as an incident “more ferocious than SARS.” In many of the capital’s major hospitals, large groups of sick patients must spend the night in waiting for treatment.

According to the National Health and Family Planning Commission of China, the entire country is now has reached three-year highs, while regular cases are at peak levels and still on the rise.

As the observed three hospitals over a single winter’s night, incalculable faces passed in front of our camera lens. These faces went from concerned to scared to simply tired as they grew increasingly worried about the consequences of having to wait so long for treatment.

In the Capital Institute of Pediatrics, adults and children with the night of excruciating waiting just to see a doctor.

In addition to having to deal with from small cities and rural Chinese villages who have come to receive treatment of other diseases. For these people, high-quality medical in their hometowns. This is not only the result of a shortage of hospitals and other medical facilities, but also due to the lack of well-trained doctors at the local level. In the Chinese mainland, some 80 percent of premium medical resources are concentrated in big cities.

In the emergency center at one of China’s best hospitals, Peking Union Medical College Hospital (PUMCH), 34-year-old Zhang Miao lay on the and with her necessaries scattered a bowl of instant noodles.

Zhang had been camping out in the corridor for three nights. Although she has spent around 18,000 yuan ($2,771) for treatment, she said she feels that it has been worth it since “the medical facilities in my village are unacceptably abysmal.”

The government, amid continuous public complaints over the soaring cost of medical services promised that greater effort will be made to provide national comprehensive medical services through further reforms.