What a lax response to the medical crisis

What’s urgent now is to devise extraordinary measures to effectively resolve the alarming medical vacuum, not a quick fix.

As an increasing number of emergency rooms have trouble operating, patients suffer deepening pain. In Busan, a patient died while desperately looking for a surgeon. After the construction worker in his 70s fell to the ground from the second floor of a structure, an ambulance arrived on the spot and first aiders called several hospitals. But all of them refused to take the patient, citing a lack of doctors for emergency treatment. The injured worker was later brought to a hospital 50 kilometers (31 miles) away, but couldn’t find a doctor with expertise in emergency treatment. The case explicitly shows the severity of the medical vacuum after the collective walkout by trainee doctors in protest of the government’s plan to increase the medical school admissions quota six months ago.

If such a tragic incident occurred in the second largest city in Korea, what about other places? After the massive strike, hospitals can’t properly run their emergency rooms or even shut them down, which is in stark contrast with what President Yoon Suk Yeol said in a press conference last month. “Our emergency treatment system is working smoothly,” he said.

President Yoon on Tuesday visited a general hospital in Gyeonggi, which still operates its emergency room. We welcome his trip to the hospital to listen to voices from doctors in the field. He promised to give more support to essential medicines, but it’s a mid- to long-term project, not an immediate solution to address the worsening medical crisis.

Despite the grave situation, the government still shows a laidback attitude. Park Min-soo, a vice minister of the Health Ministry, said, “If patients themselves can call the hospital, their condition is not deemed serious.” In a meeting of the governing People Power Party (PPP) on Thursday, Kim Jong-hyuk, a member of the Supreme Council, asked, “How many citizens would agree to the vice minister’s remark that hyperthermia, stomachaches and bleeding are just light illnesses?” Policymakers must think deeply about why such criticisms come from the governing party.

The five-day Chuseok holidays are just a week away. If such terrible cases take place during the festive period, it can cause a national crisis. The government plans to deploy doctors in the military to emergency rooms of large hospitals, but we are only suspicious of its effect. The relocation of military doctors will certainly affect soldiers’ health. What’s urgent now is to devise extraordinary measures to effectively resolve the alarming medical vacuum, not a quick fix. We hope the government and the medical community will help normalize the operation of emergency rooms directly linked to people’s lives as quickly as possible.