clinics
A doctor at a hospital in Pyongyang. (Roan Harak, Flickr, Creative Commons)

A doctor was recently exiled to a mountainous area with his family for extorting bribes from the family of a patient hospitalized for inhaling toxic fumes, Daily NK has learned.

“A doctor at a hospital in Kangwon Province was put before a public struggle session and then exiled into a mountainous area with his family for taking 20 packs of cigarettes from the family of a patient they put in an oxygen chamber after he was hospitalized for toxic gas poisoning,” a reporting partner in Kangwon Province told Daily NK on Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons. 

According to the reporting partner, the family brought the patient to the hospital in the early morning hours of Mar. 13 after he collapsed from toxic gas asphyxia.

The emergency room doctor on duty put the patient into an oxygen chamber, but then demanded the family pay about 20 packs of cigarettes for the oxygen, “as if the medical oxygen was his own property,” the reporting partner said. 

“The patient’s family was worried that if they said no, the doctor would cut off the oxygen to the chamber or do something to impact his recovery, so they couldn’t stay by the side of the patient — who was in critical condition between life and death — and ran off somewhere to get smokes on credit,” he continued, adding, “they then filed a public complaint to the provincial party committee in anger.”

Receiving the complaint, the provincial party committee immediately called in the head of the hospital’s technical department, the hospital’s party secretary and all the hospital’s doctors to the committee assembly hall for a public struggle session led by the vice chair of the provincial people’s committee in charge of public health.

About 10 people condemned the “ideological and mental state” of the emergency room doctor who abandoned his duty to save his patients due to greed. The meeting also revealed a written confession by the doctor in which he admitted to repeatedly taking bribes from patients. 

The committee slammed doctors who take kickbacks or bribes for treating patients, saying that “they are unqualified to be medical warriors entrusted by the Workers’ Party and must never be allowed to join the ranks of doctors again.”

“The emergency room doctor who stood before the public struggle session wasn’t handed over to law enforcement, nor did he have his medical license revoked,” the reporting partner said. “Instead, he and his family were exiled into the mountains of Kangwon Province.

“Most doctors are struggling financially because they receive no rations, and hospitals also need to complete government tasks, so they take money for treating people,” he continued, adding, “the incident has become a warning about doing that.”

Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler. 

Daily NK works with a network of reporting partners who live inside North Korea. Their identities remain anonymous due to security concerns. More information about Daily NK’s reporting partner network and information gathering activities can be found on our FAQ page here.  

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