Special ward for officers in Guangxi inappropriate

With limited medical treatment resources, it's inappropriate for a ward especially for officials to be built at Renmin Hospital in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, according to an article in China Youth Daily.

Excerpts:

Renmin Hospital invested 350 million yuan ($57.1 million) in building a ward especially for officials, sparking heated public criticism on the Internet.

The floor area of the ward building is 50,959 square meters and it has 427 beds, against an overall floor area at the hospital of 224,500 square meters and 1,698 beds.

It's well known that the public, not officials, comprises by far the bulk of the hospital's patients.

The construction plan has obviously afforded too much privilege to officials. Although there is no regulation or restriction on special medical services for officials, the public's difficulty in securing medical services is well known in China.

The hospital is paying too much attention to officials, which is unfair to the public. An unbalanced medical resource gap between officials and the public runs counter to the hospital's function of serving the public.