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In the wake of the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) outbreak, the
government is considering upgrading the Korea Centers for Disease Control (KCDC)
and Prevention instead of separating it from the Ministry of Health and
Welfare.
If the plan goes through, the head of the KCDC will become a
deputy-ministerial level official and the center will get personnel and budget
authority independent from the ministry.
“If we separate the KCDC and
make it another ministry, it will have less cooperation with health and
insurance elements of the Health Ministry and also other government offices,”
said Seo Jae-ho, a professor of public administration at Pukyong University, who
consulted with the ministry on post-MERS measures.
The ministry thinks
giving more autonomy to the KCDC would actually have the same effect as
separating it while maintaining cooperation with other departments.
“The
U.S. CDC is also under the Department of Health and Human Services, which means
the department is in charge of the law and policies and the CDC takes care of
their execution,” said an official of the Health Ministry. “If we apply this
plan, the authority of the experts is going to be reinforced and the KCDC won’t
have to waste time reporting to the ministry.”
The government is also
planning an overhaul of the preventive system for infectious
diseases.
The measures are expected to be focused on distributing
patients from crowded general hospitals to other medical facilities, especially
when patients are not in emergency situations.
The Health Ministry held a
public hearing on Tuesday for measures to prevent the spread of infectious
diseases and said it will revise medical regulations to make it more difficult
for patients to go to general hospitals without letters from smaller
hospitals.
Overcrowded general hospitals were considered a major cause of
MERS spreading.
General hospitals do not provide health insurance
benefits to patients without letters from smaller hospitals, but exceptions are
patients coming to the family medicine section, rehabilitation section, dental
departments, delivery rooms and emergency rooms.
These exceptions have
been abused by people wanting to go directly to general hospitals. So the
ministry is reviewing a measure to exclude the family medicine section. The
number of patients at family medicine sections at the so-called top five
hospitals in Seoul account for 3 percent of all their patients. The government
suggested the same measure several times in the past, but the bill never was
passed due to hospitals’ protests. I'm not sure what opinion to be passed, but I wish it would bring good effects. I hope that do not happen illness like Mers. 1120 이다영
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