EMILY TSANG EMILY.TSANG@SCMP.COM
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 24 September, 2015, 5:17pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 24 September, 2015, 6:01pm
A first-aid station on Harcourt Road, Admiralty. Photo: Emily Tsang
A doctor who helped at a first-aid station in Admiralty during the 79-day pro-democracy Occupy sit-ins revealed he and other medical workers came under investigation by the medical watchdog for possible professional misconduct due to their participation in the protests.
Dr Ray Leung Tse-hang, who worked at a public hospital, was cleared in the investigation – which he was not aware of until the Medical Council, which licensed and disciplined doctors, told him its conclusion.
Complaints that triggered the council’s checks suggested medical professionals should not be participants of social movements outside their work. The complainants said “they should have sufficient rest outside their work in order to ensure public safety”.
Leung wrote about the hitherto covert checks on his Facebook page ahead of the one-year anniversary of the protests on September 28.
“History will decide whether the students’ social movement was right or wrong,” he wrote. “But as a medic, saving lives is our mission. And this is always the right thing to do.
“This is Hong Kong. This is our home. There was a group of medics who could not stand just sitting there in front of the television and watching our people getting hurt without offering any help.”
Leung said the complainants named a few doctors, nurses and first-aid workers who offered assistance at occupied zones in Admiralty and Mong Kok last year.
He stressed that as medical professionals, all of them put aside their political differences at the sites and gave equal treatment to the wounded.
He did not know about the complaints until this month, when the council informed him it had conducted a preliminary investigation and dismissed the case.
Some 191 health care workers were manning six medical outposts in Admiralty as volunteers on September 28, according to a report in the Medical Association’s monthly magazine in October.
The report, written by medical student Henry Pang of the University of Hong Kong’s orthopaedics and traumatology department, said four of the outposts were destroyed in the melee after police fired tear gas at the crowds. Many medical supplies were lost or damaged.
The report also said police created an unsafe environment for humanitarian workers.
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/1861098/doctors-nurses-probed-medical-council-helping-occupy-first
