South Korea: The government of South Korea has announced plans to deploy military and public health doctors to hospitals affected by the walkout of trainee doctors.
Around 12,000 trainee physicians walked out of 100 hospitals over government reform plans, causing some hospitals to turn away patients and delay treatments. The government will depute twenty army surgeons and 138 public health doctors to twenty hospitals for four weeks to manage this crucial situation. The decision came after the government refused that the strike had caused a full-blown health crisis.
The number of military doctors summoned to aid is only a fraction of the around 2,400 military doctors. Although the government tried to lure doctors back to work by alerting them of the risk of their medical licenses being suspended, so far, this strategy yielded no positive results.
The government’s power includes the authority to call doctors back to work if there is a severe threat to life or public health. Physicians are striking and arguing that advancing medical school enrollment won’t solve pay and working conditions, and will only make the crises more threatening.
They consider the government’s strategy to expand annual medical school enrollment to 2,000 from 2025 is not adequate to manage the country’s lack of doctors. Critics of the policy are claiming that President Yoon Suk Yeol is using medical reforms to attain advantages for his party before parliamentary elections in April.
The ongoing dispute between the South Korean government and doctors continues, with the former attempting to convince the latter to return to work while the latter remain steadfast in their protest. According to reports, the result of this clash could lead to severe consequences for the country’s healthcare system.
RELATED | South Korea’s healthcare crisis: Over 6,000 resignations
