South Korean hospitals yesterday turned away some patients and delayed surgeries as hundreds of trainee doctors stopped working in a protest against medical training reforms.
Almost 6,500 doctors submitted their resignations — nearly half the junior workforce — with 1,600 walking off the job, South Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare figures showed.
However, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said the government would not back down over the “necessary” reforms, which he described as an essential measure to prepare for caring for the nation’s fast-aging population.
Photo: AP
The training reforms call for a 65 percent increase in the number of students admitted to medical schools — an additional 2,000 people a year — starting next year.
Seoul has been trying to increase medical school enrolments for 30 years to no avail, he said, adding that the country was at a point where “we can’t withstand another failure.”
“This increase is far short of necessary numbers to prepare the future of our nation,” he said, urging doctors not to “hold people’s lives and health hostage” with work stoppages.
The government has ordered the doctors back to work, and police have warned of arrests for instigators of the work stoppages. South Korean law limits the ability of medical staff to strike.
Second Vice Health Minister Park Min-soo told reporters that the walkouts had already resulted in cancelations of surgeries and disruptions in medical services.
The government’s top priority is to “maintain medical emergency services and treatment for serious cases at major hospitals [to] avoid situations in which patients with serious conditions are prevented from accessing treatment,” he said.
The Asan Medical Center in Seoul, one of the biggest general hospitals in the country, said that its emergency room was operating as normal yesterday, but “some adjustments” were being made.
“Some surgeries have been postponed due to the ongoing situation,” the hospital’s PR wing said.
South Korea says it has one of the lowest doctor-to-population ratios among developed countries, and the government is pushing hard to increase the number of physicians.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other