Hunan: 200 hospital staff strike and stage protest over attack

by Michael Woodhead
More than 200 hospital staff staged a sudden strike and protest at the Yueyang Second Hospital after medical staff were attacked, held hostage and forced to kneel in front of the body of a patient.

The incident arose after a young man was brought into the hospital emergency department on August 20th with stab wounds. The patient, a 31-year old male called Chen Qiming, was critically ill and did not survive for long. After his death, dozens of relatives of the dead man came into the hospital and created havoc, seizing and beating medical staff and forcing them to kneel in front of the body of their dead relative in the mortuary. The family members also ran riot in the hospital, smashing up offices and blocking entrances, disrupting normal working of the hospital for eight hours.

The next morning hospital staff said they would refuse to work until those responsible for the attacks had been brought to justice and they were provided with adequate safety protection in the workplace.
They carried placards saying "Expecting fairness, give us respect". The protest attracted a large crowd of onlookers, and the strikers said they demanded that their legal rights be respected.

A staff member at the hospital said the mood of staff was indignant and emotional.  Hospital managers had advised them not to stage a protest but to instead take their grievances to the local government office. However, the staff opted for a spontaneous strike and could not be blocked.

Doctors said the dead man had suffered critical injuries including deep penetrating knife wounds to the chest that caused heavy blood loss and which were not survivable. They had done everything they could to save him when he was brought into the hospital, but despite their best efforts the man died.
When the staff were attacked many other staff members including doctors and ambulance drivers came to their help, and police were called. However, despite trying to mediate, the more than 150 police were unable to settle the situation for eight hours.

A spokesman for the Yueyang City Health Bureau said an investigation had been launched into the incident. Local police said they were also investigating the incident but had not yet contacted the families said to have been involved in the attacks.

According to sources at the hospital this is the second violent attack on staff this year and the third violent medical dispute in Hunan in in the last two months.

No benefit from high dose atorvastatin: Hunan study

For people who have had a heart attack, taking a high dose of atorvastatin (up to 40mg/day) has no added benefit over a moderate dose (10mg/day) a study has shown.
In a two year clinical trial involving more than 1300 patients with acute coronary syndromes (ACS), cardiologists from the Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Changsha, found that the dose of statin had no impact on the primary end points of cardiac death, non-fatal acute myocardial infarction, revascularization, ischaemic stroke and unstable angina or severe heart failure requiring emergency hospitalization. The patients' lipid levels were low initially (mean LDL cholesterol level of 2.7mmol/L) and declined by 20% in the moderate dose statin group and 27% in the intensive statin group, respectively.
"For ACS patients with a relatively low baseline LDL cholesterol level who received optimized current medication and interventional therapy, the incremental LDL cholesterol reduction of 6.4% achieved by double-dose statin did not bring significant clinical effectiveness," the researchers concluded.
The findings are published in Atherosclerosis.

Hunan investigates hepatitis batches after two deaths

Health authorities of Hunan, central China, are investigating three cases of adverse reactions to hepatitis B vaccination, including two deaths.
A one-month-old boy died on December 6 in Hengshan County, two days after being vaccinated. Another eight months old died in Changning City on December 9, one day after vaccination for both hepatitis B and flu. A third newborn in Hanshou County showed a severe adverse reaction after being vaccinated on November 25, the Hunan Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday.

Elderly Hunan villagers prefer suicide to living without medical care

Mo Qiulian ties up small bundles of firewood as she murmurs to herself: “Why haven’t I died?”
The 67-year-old villager has thought of killing herself many times since she had a stroke in March, followed by four months of lying in bed unable to move before regaining some mobility in her upper body.
Mo is one of many elderly residents in Kongtong Village of Hunan Province who say they will commit suicide one day.
They look forward in fear to a lack of medical care to deal with diseases as they get older. They are uncertain what the future holds, feeling insecure because their children left for the city and may never return, the Sanxiang City Express said yesterday.

'Cancer street' set up by Hunan outpatients having treatment

Half a kilometer in length, the narrow Jiatong Street that cuts through the Hunan Provincial Tumor Hospital and Hunan Normal University Medical College has been dubbed "Cancer Street," as it is populated by hundreds of cancer patients seeking treatment at the hospital. 
It began with some patients who rented apartments in the street for long-term medical treatment, and after some time it naturally developed into a neighborhood accommodating hundreds of patients, most of whom live here for a couple of months at a time.
The street has fully adapted to its population. Small hotels full of tenants occupy this area, with groceries, eateries and pharmacies serving their needs. It looks like a common, rundown yet lively backstreet seen in most cities, but look closer and the vegetable shops here also sell stoves and woks to tenants, clothing shops offer wigs to those losing hair from radioactive treatment, and pharmacies and clinics are also a source of psychological support for patients fighting the fear of cancer.
On a fine day, tenants spread white bedding under the sun, like those in the hospital. Coming from all over the province, the tenants usually share their experiences in combating the diseases and try to encourage each other.
Some patients who have recovered and left Jiatong Street call it the "old place" that they will visit again, but not everyone will be fortunate enough to reminisce about this place.
Source: Global Times

Hunan woman committed fraud to pay for dialysis

A young woman, who has uremia in Hengshan county, Hunan province, has been sentenced to six years and fined 100,000 yuan ($16,400) for cheating the new rural cooperative medical system out of more than 420,000 yuan to treat her kidney disease, Xiaoxiang Morning News reported.
Nie Shuihua, 24, was not jailed because she has to receive frequent dialysis treatment. But 16 of her relatives and neighbors were given sentences of two to three years and fined 4,000 to 5,000 yuan each for helping her get the money.
Nie, a farmer, was diagnosed with uremia in July 2012. As it was expensive to treat the disease in a hospital in Changsha, the capital of Hunan, Nie bought fake hospitalization invoices to be reimbursed by the rural cooperative medical system.
Asked why Nie resorted to deception, Tang Qiulian, Nie's mother, said that her daughter wanted only to survive.
Source: ecns

China medical news roundup for Friday 15 November

 

Village doctors empowered with cloud computing

Doctors serving China’s 900 million people living in rural areas are being helped with cloud computing. In a pilot study, researchers from Taiwan equipped village doctors with Health Information Technology and developing an electronic health record (EHR) system.

The EHR system based on a Cloud-computing architecture was developed and deployed in Xilingol county of Inner Mongolia using various computing resources (hardware and software) to deliver services over the health network using internet when available. From 2008 to 2011 health records were created for 26% (291,087) of 1,108,951 Xilingol residents. There were 10,240 cases of hypertension and 1,152 cases of diabetes diagnosed and registered. Furthermore, 2,945 hypertensive and 305 diabetic patients enrolled in follow-up. Implementing the EHR system revealed a high rate of cholecystectomies leading to investigations and findings of drinking water contaminated with metals. Measures were taken to inform the population and clean drinking water was supplied.

The researchers concluded: “The Cloud-based EHR approach improved the care provision for village doctor in rural China and increased the efficiency of the healthcare system to monitor the health status of the population and to manage preventive care efforts. It also helped discover contaminated water in one of the project areas revealing further benefits if the system is expanded and improved.”

 Full study: Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine

Unifying medical insurance is a gradual process: expert

China is attempting to put its three medical insurance systems under one administration, but a healthcare researcher has warned that obstacles still remain, and an effective solution is to merge two of them initially.

The move can only be done step by step, and the first step is to unify the management of the urban resident basic medical insurance and the new rural cooperative medical scheme, Ying Yazhen, of the National Health Development Research Center under the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC), was quoted as saying in a report carried on Thursday by the China Business News.

Merging the two insurance schemes is feasible as they are similar in terms of fund raising, reimbursement standards and the income of people under their coverage, Ying explained.

She said many places in China, such as parts of the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang and the central province of Anhui, have already merged the two insurances and realized a free capital flow between the two.

Considering its huge population and imbalanced economic development, China implements three separate medical insurances -- the urban workers basic medical insurance for urban employees, the new rural cooperative medical scheme for the rural population, and the urban resident basic medical insurance for people who are not included in the first two insurances, mainly the underage and unemployed residents in cities.

However, the two insurances set for urban residents are managed by the country's Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, while the scheme for rural people is administrated by the NHFPC. The State Council, or China's cabinet, decided this March to put the three insurances under one administration in order to reduce government redundancy and raise efficiency in medical services. Ying suggested putting all the three insurances under the control of the NHFPC because it is best placed to coordinate the management of the insurances and the medical service fees and quality.

But the researcher insisted that a gradual process is needed for such unified administration.

Compared with the other two systems, the insurance for urban employees is quite different in its participation polices and financing levels, which can be five to seven times higher, Ying told the China Business News.

What's more, its reimbursement percentage for participants, which may reach up to more than 90 percent, is also much higher than the scheme for the rural population and the insurance for unemployed urban residents, according to Ying. The reimbursement percentages of the latter two are often about 55 percent of what patients should pay for medical services.

Ying said there have been rare examples across the country in which the three insurances have been merged for unified management; however, even where this has been attained, administrators have not been able to manage free capital flow among the three insurances.

Source: Global Times

Shanghai to set up China’s first translational medicine centre

The country's first national-level translational medicine center will be established in Shanghai to promote health benefits for individuals and communities.

Translational medicine, also known as translational science, is a discipline within biomedical and public health research. It focuses on translating laboratory findings into diagnostic tools, medicines, procedures, policies and education to improve the health of individuals.

"Translational medicine in China is rapidly growing, though started recently. The establishment of the new center will boost the development of translational medicine in the country," said Zhao Qiang, vice-president of Shanghai Ruijin Hospital.

Covering an area of 60,000 square meters, the research center will have 300 beds for clinical research. And its research will focus on tumors, cardiovascular disease and metabolic diseases among others.

This weekend, the 8th Sino-US Symposium on Medicine in the 21st Century will be held in Shanghai on Nov 16-17, and this year's theme is translational medicine. Medical experts and scholars from both home and abroad will come together to discuss the latest research and the practice's development in the world.

Source: China Daily

Shanghai cracks down on illegal medical practices

At a conference in the Jiading district of the city of Shanghai, on Nov 11, the organizers announced plans to monitor the medical services field in the fight against illegal medical practices.

The related crackdown mainly targets unlicensed practitioners, unnecessary fetal gender tests, and sex-selective abortions.

The district government began its medical monitoring efforts back in 2005 and in the intervening years has developed a governmental management system involving health supervisors and community health service centers. And, things have worked out well, with the discovery of 2,373 illegal activities, with punishment handed out in 742 of the cases, and 54 handed over to the judiciary resulting in 41 people being sentenced.

Source: Jiading District News

Rainbow masks a hit for Hunan surgical staff

Have you ever walked into an operating room fearing the surgeons? Fear not, because rainbow-colored surgical masks and caps designed to ease patients' tension is apparently the latest thing to hit Chinese hospitals.

Allegedly inspired by the hit TV show, Grey's Anatomy, doctors and nurses of Hunan Provincial Maternal and Child care hospital have joined in on the fashion.

With a variety of patterns such as flowers, clouds, animals, Hello Kitty and more, doctors believe the color helps calm the patients and distract them - presumably from the likelihood that they'll lose an ovary during a pelvic operation or get blinded during a nose job. Zing!

Source: Shanghai-ist

Chinese healthcare: Gangnam style

A total of 30 people participated in a Gangnam-style healthcare video, says Wei Xiang, trade union chairman of the Henan Provincial Chest Hospital. Participants included several patients hospitalized in the hospital and the protagonist is the "hospital director of thoracic surgery".
The video of the dance by Henan Chest Hospital staff included doctors, nurses, gardeners, security and others, became immediately popular online with 5,000 comments in the first day it was posted, and the "hospital director of thoracic surgery" Zhang Junan has inadvertently became popular.
When asked about the reason for shooting the video, Lei Xinjiang, party secretary of the Henan Provincial Chest Hospital, said Gangnam style was popular throughout the world, loved by the people, and the main reason is the music is inspiring people happy. However, shooting this subject as a medical unit, the conception had to be in line with the party committee and government policy, embodied under the premise of the people demands. Therefore the hospital determined it should reflect the expectations of both doctors and patients around the harmonious relationship between doctors and patients, reflecting medical unit practitioners in a relaxed and happy work environment.
Lei Xinjiang said doctors and nurses go to work every day and are faced with different kinds of patients with a variety of the disease, which is not a cause for laughter, so this creates work pressure. The aim of the "Gangnam style" is to bring some humour and reflect their relaxed working environment with roles acted by drivers, cleaners and security.
 Zhang Junan the 'star' started 10 years ago in the hospital as a security guard, has 20 years of dance as a hobby and in his spare time began to teach dance. Now, he can be found teaching at the regular dance locations in the local square. "I did not expect such fame," he says."

Read more: China Healthcare