By Guo Shipeng BEIJING, March 6 (Reuters) - Thousands of Chinese doctors are beaten up every year and the profession is commanding less respect as rising medical costs and inequality of access fuel mounting discontent, a survey in the country has shown. China embarked on massive economic reforms three decades ago and has since abandoned a cradle-to-grave welfare system, causing hardships for millions left behind by rapid development. Many hospitals have resorted to charging premiums for medical care and prescriptions and deregulation of the health industry has brought a rash of scandals involving overcharging, bogus drugs and malpractice. A total of 5,519 doctors were injured by angry patients or relatives in the first ten months of 2006, compared with 2,600 in all of 2002 and 3,735 in 2004, and the upward trend continued, Qiu Guixing, a leading orthopedic surgeon, said on Thursday. "The relationship between doctors and patients is in an extremely abnormal state. The tension is probably the highest in the world," said Qiu, who works for the prestigious Peking Union Medical College Hospital. For that reason, some 78 percent of Chinese doctors did not want their children to study medicine, Qiu said, citing a survey. "It's neither the fault of the patients nor of the doctors. The fundamental cause is the medical system," Qiu told a group meeting of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body to parliament currently meeting in Beijing. Marketisation has lead to a problem-ridden health sector and raised the costs of seeing a doctor or staying in hospital for big diseases to a level beyond the reach for many in the world's fourth-largest economy. But Wen Jianming, another Beijing-based doctor, said the sheer size of China's population and its status as a developing nation were at the root of the health care issue, for which Beijing is expected to unveil a reform plan in the coming months after years of contentious debate. "It's not easy for any country to provide medical care for 1.3 billion people," Wen told the same meeting attended by prominent doctors and health officials. "The morale of the six million hardworking medical workers is indeed low," Wen complained, suggesting police were often on the patients' side if they had attacked doctors. "The professional environment is so bad. The government needs to do something about it." Qiu said he understood some of the patients' anger as the scarcity of medical resources remained unresolved. "A lot of people would wait in front of my hospital from midnight -- even in the winter -- in order to see a doctor," he said. "I have to take dozens of patients a day so each only gets several minutes. The one I send off is of course unhappy, but the one next in line would think I've already spent too much time on him or her." (Reporting by Guo Shipeng; Editing by David Fox)
A doctor checks a pneumonia patient at the Catarino Rivas Hospital in San Pedro Sula, March 5, 2008. Honduras has so far registered some 9,000 cases of different types of pneumonia ...
