After legislation, action is needed to protect doctors

Article 57 of China's newly passed law on basic medical care and health states, "Any individual or organization is prohibited from threatening, harming the personal security of medical staff, or violating their dignity."

The law became the hottest hashtag on domestic social network Sina Weibo after Yang Wen, a doctor at Civil Aviation General Hospital in Beijing, was stabbed by a patient's family member on Dec 24 and died the next morning. The hashtag was used 360 million times on Weibo.

The members of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, highlighted her case. At a news conference held after the passing of the law, they condemned all attacks against medical staff members.

It is a good progress for Article 57 to appear in the newly passed law, which means the country's legislature is paying more attention to personal security of medical employees.

Some might ask why doctors and nurses need such special protection, but that's exactly what they deserve. The job of doctors and nurses is to save lives, and if someone attacks or kills any one of them, it might delay treatment for tens even hundreds of patients. It is no exaggeration to say one might take several lives by killing one doctor.

Besides, if attacks against doctors and nurses go unchecked, it might damage the already fragile relationship between doctors and patients. As a result, doctors might have to spend much energy on self protection, instead of helping the patients. They might also avoid accepting certain patients over worries about being attacked. It is necessary to prevent that from happening.

That's why Article 57 has been welcomed by public and the media. However, it is necessary not to forget that killing doctors is a criminal offense and the criminal deserves criminal penalty.

Just like Zhao Ning, the head of the law department at the National Health Commission, said at the news conference: "The case (of Yang) is not a so-called medical dispute, but a serious criminal offense."

In other words, more concrete measures are needed to help the implementation of Article 57. The police need to care more about order in hospitals, the procurators need to render more efforts toward fighting such crimes, while the media needs to help more in forming a consensus of blaming all similar violence.

All the efforts have one goal in common, namely to prevent similar cases from happening in the future.