Propaganda official suspended after allegedly paralysing nurse in attack after hospital dispute
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 27 February, 2014, 3:23pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 27 February, 2014, 3:26pm
Andrea Chen [email protected]
Nurses and doctors on the mainland have faced increasing violence from frustrated patients. Photo: China Foto Press
A Jiangsu propaganda official accused of beating a nurse until he paralysed her has been suspended from his post, the province’s top prosecutor’s office announced on its official Sina Weibo account on Thursday.
Dong Anqing, the propaganda office director of the Jiangsu Provincial People’s Procuratorate, and his wife Yuan Yaping allegedly beat the nurse at a Nanjing dental hospital after the nurse informed their daughter – who was checked into the female emergency ward – that a male patient had to be transferred there due to crowding.
The procuratorate announced the suspension on its official microblog.
A photo taken by hospital staff and which circulated on social media is said to show Dong, his wife and their daughter.
Sources said the daughter was unhappy with this arrangement and complained to her parents, who later confronted the nurse on duty.
They allegedly beat Chen until she was motionless, with one report from China.com.cn, a news outlet affiliated to the State Council Information Office, saying Yuan attacked the nurse with an umbrella.
The Nanjing Stomatological Hospital posted on its official weibo on Wednesday at midnight that the nurse, surnamed Chen, was unable to move after being beaten by the suspects.
“I thought [hospital violence] was far from me. But it’s now right by my side… My colleague was sent to hospital and diagnosed with an abnormal collection of fluid in her heart and lungs,” a staff member at the dental hospital, who witnessed the incident, wrote in an online post.
Pictures on social media showed the daughter with Dong and Yuan, the vice-curator of the Jiangsu Science and Technology Museum, standing near a reception area in the hospital.
Yuan was heard threatening to kill the nurse and threatened to shame Chen and the hospital using her television broadcast connections, Beijing News quoted microbloggers as saying on Thursday.
Dong, however, denied that his wife threatened the nurse, in an interview with Beijing News. “People with common sense would never say that,” he told the newspaper.
On Wednesday afternoon, a doctor at the hospital where Chen was brought for treatment said: “The poor dental nurse is suffering from lower extremity paralysis.” The Sina Weibo post by a cardiothoracic surgeon (handling injuries in the chest, lungs and heart) was quoted by Beijing News but could no longer be found on Thursday morning.
The newspaper also quoted another doctor from the hospital saying the victim had been diagnosed with lower extremity paralysis.
News of the beating quickly spread on social media amid concerns over violence and disputes between doctors and patients on the mainland. On Thursday, Dong Anqing and the hospital became the most searched current-affairs terms on Sina Weibo. The official’s name was searched 56,989 times, while the hospital got 48,087 queries.
