2024-04-22 06:16:24
This file photo, taken on April 3, 2024, shows medical professors at a general hospital in Seoul, presenting their resignation letters.
SEOUL, April 22 (Yonhap) — Health and Welfare Minister Cho Kyoo-hong said Monday that the government will not hold discussions on possibly abandoning the plan to increase admissions to medical schools. renew the promise to achieve medical reformdespite the doctors’ strong objections.
Around 12,000 trainee doctors have walked off their jobs since February 20, in a strike against the Government’s attempt to increase the annual enrollment quota for medical students by 2,000 places, forcing major hospitals to cut surgeries and public health services cancel or delay others.
“Medical reform is a path that must be followed to save essential and local health care systems, even if it is difficult and difficult,” Cho said at a government response meeting.
Talks about possibly abandoning the plan or postponing it for a year “are not in line with the people’s opinion,” Cho said, urging doctors to develop a “unified proposal based on scientific criteria.”
The Government said, last week, that it has accepted the request rectors of six national universities for flexibility in expanding the enrollment quota in medical schools, a decision that raised hopes that the long strike by trainee doctors would end.
Under the decision, which is practically seen as a compromise, local universities will be allowed to increase their admission quota freely, with the margin of annual increase between 50 and 100 percent, starting in 2025.
Cho said that they hope that the medical community will openly recognize the government’s efforts to accept the recommendation of the presidents of the national universities to find solutions to the conflict, and he urged the striking doctors to return to their hospitals.
He added that the Government will continue to implement medical reform relentlessly, although he will be open to “reasonable” views.
The minister also urged doctors’ organizations to participate in a special presidential committee on medical reform, which is to be launched this week, as the Korea Medical Association (KMA) and South Korea Internees and Residents Association (KIRA) vowed to boycott make the. initiative.
People walk through a general hospital in central Seoul on April 21, 2024.
In support of the trainee doctors’ strike, medical professors resigned last month. Some media reports say their resignations could take effect as early as Thursday.
However, Second Vice Minister of Health and Welfare, Park Min-soo, told reporters that there are no plans, so far, to accept their resignations.
He added that the process to increase the number of medical students will be completed by the end of this month, when universities will finalize their admission plans for the next academic year, asking doctors to present a unified and reasonable proposal ” before it’s too late” .
Health and Welfare Minister Cho Kyoo-hong speaks at a government response meeting on 22 April 2024.
(FIN)
#REDACTED #Government #refuses #talk #canceling #plan #increase #number #medical #students