Editorials

Op-Ed Contributors

Chinese Press

Columnists

LETTERS

Unreasonable decision

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-08-15 08:27

Nothing could be more ridiculous and unreasonable as the decision by the Henan provincial bureau of health to punish a local hospital for cutting open the chest of a migrant worker and making the diagnosis of pneumoconiosis. The reason for the punishment, according to the bureau, is that the hospital is not designated to diagnose occupational diseases.

True, the local occupational disease prevention institute has the sole authority to certify such diseases, but it diagnosed the migrant workers with tuberculosis. The fact is that the migrant worker would have to wait to die without a penny in compensation had it not been for the right diagnosis from the First Hospital Attached to Zhengzhou University of Medical Science, which performed the operation.

Any sensible person will agree that the hospital did the right thing. It is the obligation of any hospital and any doctor to make the right diagnosis of any patient who goes to them for help. Even without the designation as a hospital to certify occupational diseases, a hospital still has the right to provide the correct diagnosis if it's discovered that a patient has an occupational disease.

In the logic of the local provincial health authorities, this hospital should have turned down the request of the migrant worker and it should have refused to provide the diagnosis certificate even if it did the operation and knew what disease this patient had.

That would be against basic professional ethics and against the basic principle that a hospital must try its best to save a patient's life.

As a government department that oversees all hospitals in China's largest province of Henan, this bureau should receive the most severe punishment for making such an unreasonable decision.

It is beyond understanding that leaders of this bureau could be so inane not to realize that its punishment was not only ridiculous but against common sense.

The decision can only be understood as a move of retaliation against the hospital, whose right diagnosis has attracted the attention of the entire nation to a scandal in this province. And local leaders would certainly feel that this very scandal has led to a loss of face.

What they have failed to see is that its decision to punish the hospital that did the right thing will undoubtedly further put them to shame.

If the scandal has only revealed that the local occupational disease prevention institute is such an irresponsible unit, this wrong decision sends the message that local leaders have no concern for the well being of local people. It also reveals that local leaders are more concerned with their own face than the lives of local residents.

If they have any concern for the well-being of local residents, the right thing is to apologize to the migrant worker in the first place for the unnecessary pains he has suffered from the operation, to punish the institution that has made the wrong diagnosis and reward the hospital.

(China Daily 08/15/2009 page4)