A doctors' group has labeled as a "policy failure" the case of a pregnant woman in her 30s from Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, who was transferred to Busan after failing to find an emergency delivery hospital, resulting in the death of her 29-week-old fetus. The group urged the government to secure financial support to maintain regional essential medical services and to establish policies to protect medical staff.
Kim Sung-geun, spokesperson for the Korean Medical Association (KMA), made the remarks at a regular briefing held Monday afternoon at the KMA headquarters in Yongsan-gu, Seoul. "This incident is a tragic case that shows how seriously Korea's regional essential medical system is being shaken," he said.
The KMA views the incident not as a problem of an individual medical institution but as a foreseeable man-made disaster. "Since 2024, there has effectively been only one medical institution operating a neonatal intensive care unit in the North Chungcheong region, and even that institution has had difficulty responding to emergencies at night and on holidays," Kim said. "Essential medical fields in the region, including obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, emergency medicine, and surgery, are already facing the risk of collapse due to long-accumulated staff shortages, heavy workloads, high medical liability burdens, and low compensation systems."
He added, "In particular, obstetrics, which handles high-risk deliveries, is experiencing a serious nationwide avoidance phenomenon, and the situation worsens the further one goes into rural areas. This is not a result of medical staff's lack of will, but a result of structural and policy failure." Kim argued that to resolve the fundamental problem, the government must overhaul the system and strengthen regional essential medical services.
"Practical financial support to maintain regional essential medical services, strengthened national responsibility for high-risk deliveries and emergency medical care, institutional improvements to protect medical staff, and stable training and workforce security measures must be prepared as soon as possible," he stressed.
