IANS | 28 Mar, 2024
Intern doctors in South Korea, who have left their worksites in
protest of a plan to hike the number of medical students, will be barred
from training in the first half of this year unless they register for
jobs by April 2, a senior official said on Thursday.
Deputy Health Minister Jun Byung-wang urged intern doctors to "return to the training hospitals within this month."
Unless they do so, Jun said, "Internship training in the first half of this year is impossible", Yonhap news agency reported.
About
12,000 interns and resident doctors have remained off the job since
February 20 in protest of the push to hike the number of medical
students, forcing surgeries and other public health services to be
cancelled or delayed at major hospitals.
In support of junior
doctors' labour action, medical professors, who are senior doctors at
major university hospitals, have also begun tendering their resignations
starting this week.
Prospects for resolving the standoff
throughout talks are slim as the government allocated the additional
2,000 medical school admission seats to universities, in a sign that the
government won't back down from the plan.
With the mass walkout
by trainee doctors continuing for more than five weeks, major general
hospitals temporarily shut down part of their wards and rearranged
staff.
The five major hospitals -- Asan Medical Center, Samsung
Medical Center, Severance Hospital, Seoul National University Hospital
and Seoul St. Mary's Hospital -- have suffered more than 1 billion won
($741,344) of losses per day and have been in an emergency management
mode to overcome the crisis, according to officials.
Seoul
National University Hospital closed 10 out of its 60 wards temporarily,
including those for emergency patients and cancer patients after sending
patients there to other wards, "for flexible operation given the
current situation," an official said.