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Hong Kong Hospitals Find Themselves on Protest Frontlines
by REUTERS

HONG KONG—Hong Kong’s public hospitals, long known for professionalism, have become a new front in the pro-democracy protests that have engulfed the city for more than five months.

An incident in which riot police armed with shields and batons interrogated a pregnant woman at her bedside in a hospital labor ward has become a rallying cry for medical professionals who fear that patient confidentiality and high standards of treatment are under threat.

The two officers ignored requests by medical staff to not enter the room of the pregnant woman, a 19-year-old arrested on suspicion of taking part in an illegal protest. The Oct. 7 incident was corroborated by medical staff, the city’s government-funded Hospital Authority and police.

Police rarely entered areas like labor or emergency wards before the protests escalated in June, according to Arisina Ma, president of the Hong Kong Public Doctors’ Association (HKPDA), which represents public hospital staff, and six other doctors and nurses who requested anonymity.

Now, arrests and interrogations of suspects in public hospital rooms have become commonplace, they said. That has raised concerns that protesters requiring medical care might avoid the public hospital system for fear of arrest.

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https://www.theepochtimes.com/hong-kong-hospitals-find-themselves-on-protest-frontlines_3154354.html

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