The Chinese doctor who was the first to blow the whistle on the coronavirus emerging in Wuhan has become nearly blind in one eye in a high-profile medical dispute that has sent shares of China’s biggest private hospital chain plunging.
Ai Fen (艾芬), who heads the emergency department at the Central Hospital of Wuhan where COVID-19 patients were first detected, said that a nearly 30,000 yuan (US$4,643) cataract surgery in May last year at the Wuhan branch of the Aier Eye Hospital Group Co caused deteriorating vision in her right eye.
By October, her retina had detached, she said in a video posted on Sina Weibo last week.
The hospital chain, which runs more than 500 hospitals in China and dozens across Europe, the US and Southeast Asia, said in a statement yesterday that there is no link between the surgery and Ai’s retina detachment.
Ai’s extreme myopia was a high-risk factor and the detachment occurred five months after the surgery, which went smoothly, the hospital said.
The dispute reflects the ongoing crisis of confidence in private medical providers in China amid rapid growth of the industry, as middle-class Chinese clamor for access to better healthcare.
Local access to better drugs and treatments has greatly improved in recent years as China invests billions in expanding care, but patient-doctor disputes have led to doctors being attacked and even killed by bitter patients and their family members.
Ai said that Aier doctors ignored test results that could have flagged the surgery’s riskiness and that results from one pre-surgery test were doctored to make her cataract problem seem worse.
The hospital denied that tests were doctored, though it acknowledged problems like incomplete patient records after surgery and doctors’ failure to report the adverse event in time.
The retina detachment could have been prevented if the doctors had detected signs of complications and paid attention to her concerns of dim vision, she said.
“When the retina detachment occurred, they pushed me away to my own hospital for surgery,” Ai wrote.
“I have been a very optimistic person, but this eye problem has made me collapse,” she wrote. “My family needs to accompany me when I walk and I can’t hold my own baby. I feel that I am having a mental breakdown and I’m in agony.”
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
A surprising gut feeling may help pigeons find their way home. Animals use various techniques to navigate, including following the stars and remembering key landmarks. Birds, fish and turtles orient themselves using Earth’s magnetic field as a compass, but it is not yet clear how exactly they do this. Pigeons are a well-known group of frequent flyers that can traverse hundreds of kilometers in a single day. For thousands of years, humans have used them to carry news, notes and military messages. Scientists have long tried to untangle how pigeons travel without getting lost. Some think the birds detect magnetic cues using light-sensitive
RSS