A patient on a wheelchair is seen in this photo taken Tuesday of an unspecified Seoul-based hospital. (Yonhap)
A 16-year-old suffering from a brain hemorrhage stemming from a rare medical condition has died, after his surgery was delayed due to trouble finding an emergency room with the proper medical staff.
Local broadcaster YTN reported Tuesday that the boy passed away recently, one week after he was hospitalized on Nov. 15. The boy had what is known as moyamoya disease, a chronic and progressive condition of the arteries in the brain which can lead to narrowing of blood vessels that can eventually cause strokes and seizures.
The emergency workers called nearby hospitals for an emergency room that can perform a surgery, but most of them refused to take him, citing shortage of medical staff. He was taken to a hospital some 70 minutes after calling the 119 emergency service, but the hospital said it too was unable to perform the surgery.
The teen eventually received an operation about six hours after his mother first called the emergency operators, after which he failed to make recovery and passed away.
The boy's death marked yet another case of an emergency patient being turned away multiple hospitals, which is largely due to staff shortages stemming from months-long walkout of physicians across the country. Doctors have been engaging in a medical strike in protest of the government's medical reform plans, which involve substantial increase of the medical school admission quota.
The government took a step back from the initial plan to increase the quota by 2,000 in the 2025 school year to upping the quota by 1,500. But the majority of the doctors who walked off of their work since February remain firm on their stance, that the plan should be scrapped altogether.
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