Taiwan: Many children died of the virus, revealing the complete lack of medical resources!

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Chen Yannian's International Socialist Road

The new crown epidemic has heated up sharply, the cumulative number of confirmed cases has exceeded 2 million, and 2,300 lives have been lost as a result. At the same time, the Tsai Ing-wen government and Chen Shizhong still denied the shortage of medical resources, saying it was "alarmism". In fact, for the Tsai Ing-wen government, as long as it is unfavorable and endangers its authority, even the description of the current situation will be described as "rumours" by the DPP and its cyber army.

Many children died of the virus

When the DPP was busy arguing that "no medical care can be insufficient", as of June 9, 17 children had died, and a total of 43 severely ill children had died. 10 times, 8 times that of Korea!

Children's vaccines did not arrive until the middle of May, when the new crown epidemic lasted for a month and a half, revealing the truth of the DPP government's claim to "delay the peak of the epidemic" and promote the "new Taiwan model" - the lack of medical resources and preparations allowed the epidemic to spread .

The current situation of medical runs can be seen everywhere. A confirmed child in Keelung City, governed by the DPP, had a high fever of 42 degrees and was accompanied by his mother to run five hospitals in a row. There was no vacant bed, and he died before arriving at the hospital. Another DPP-ruled Pingtung County, the mother went to three hospitals in a row with her son, who was diagnosed with high fever, but was refused admission. In mid-April, a 2-year-old boy in Xinbei Zhonghe had a high fever. His father made 4 calls and waited for 81 minutes for the ambulance to arrive. He died six days later, and the command center adjusted the rules after this case, making the confirmed cases and those in home isolation uncomfortable. You can go to the hospital by yourself - this is the "advance deployment" that the DPP is proud of!

Blood and sweat health care and medical commercialization

Taiwan is proud of its health insurance system, which does not serve the needs of the grassroots people. In the face of the new crown epidemic, it has been "returned to its original shape". Health insurance has cooperated with hospital profits for nearly 30 years. In addition, because the health insurance payment system has a limit on the number of days of hospitalization, the hospital will not be paid after the limited number of days, resulting in the hospital wanting to discharge the patient after the specified number of days, ignoring the patient's needs.

Children's emergency department has long been identified as a "long-term loss" department by hospital management, because health insurance pays major consortium hospitals based on "patient volume" and "examination, treatment, and drug fees", but the volume of children's emergency visits is unstable, and the number of inspections is not stable. In addition to less treatment and lower drug costs, health insurance payments to hospitals are also less, resulting in a situation where pediatric emergency physicians are paid less than adult emergency physicians. Physicians cut in half! As a result, in the face of the new crown epidemic, there is a shortage of paediatric emergency physicians - and this is actually the result of Taiwan's medical profit-oriented system!

Hear the voice of care?

Chen Shizhong pretended to hold a symposium on "Listening to the Voice of Nursing" on May 25, but three days ago, the Ministry of Health and Welfare relaxed the ratio of nursing to patients in special wards and compared them to general acute wards.

The symposium just rationalized the unreasonable current situation. During the meeting, the upper limit of the nurse-patient ratio in the dedicated ward was raised to one to seven (one nurse taking care of seven patients), but there was no mechanism for the hospital to enforce it. And the nurse's suggestion that "one to five" care for critically ill patients is already the upper limit. Chen Shizhong only responded: "I can't think of any other way", "All I can think of is to give money to compensate everyone."

The hospital opened 30% more dedicated wards for profit, but was unwilling to increase the manpower so that the nursing staff would not be burdened. The granting of allowances only opens the way for the current situation where hospitals are reluctant to spend money to replenish manpower, and continue to use policies that treat the symptoms rather than the root causes and make nurses work harder. In the past, the epidemic prevention allowances of many medical staff were delayed, and even the allowances were "forced to discount 20%" frequently. Moreover, the medical resources can be fully and effectively supplemented. What is needed to fight against the new crown pneumonia epidemic is not to increase subsidies, but to fully supplement the nursing manpower of major hospitals.

Building a workplace struggle

When the outbreak broke out in May last year, Tsai Ing-wen ordered to "replenish the medical and nursing manpower", but after a year of the epidemic, the nurses were forced to accept the condition of sweating and sweating! It can be seen that the DPP has never been reluctant to challenge the hospital management, and only wants to make a bad check and is unwilling to cash it.

The new crown epidemic has created a wave of medical and nursing struggles around the world in the past two years. Medical industry workers should not continue to believe in the blue and green parties that are pro-consortium, and hospitals often become profit-making places opened by big consortiums in the name of charity to save taxes. Therefore, we need to organize labor unions in the workplace, unite to fight against the management and the government, promote the democratization of the workplace, oppose the system of sweat and sweat, and unite the working class in various industrial sectors to challenge the rule of capital consortia. All private hospitals should be made public, and at the same time, public medical resources should be greatly increased, and the medical industry sector should be handed over to the democratic control of workers, so as to fully complement the medical and nursing manpower, realize comprehensive and adequate and free public medical care, and meet the needs of the grassroots people, and then fight against the once-in-a-century Global Coronavirus Pandemic.