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China’s hospitals are a battleground — not just for the war on illness but also for the one between physicians and their patients.

If that statement seems extreme, consider these data points from state-run medical organizations:

Medical staff are attacked by patients or their relatives at a rate of once every two weeks per hospital, according to the China Hospital Association, Chinese news agencies reported.



In the last two weeks there have been at least six serious incidents, including in Guangdong Province on Oct. 21, when a Dr. Xiong Xuming was left with a damaged eye and ruptured spleen after being beaten up by a patient’s relatives for refusing to allow them into the intensive care unit, and in Zhejiang Province on Oct. 25, when Dr. Wang Yunjie was stabbed to death by a patient unhappy with his treatment.

Since 2002, attacks have risen by an average of nearly 23 percent a year, the China Hospital Management Society said in a paper published in December in Chinese Community Doctors, a medical journal.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Li Keqiang addressed the issue, in a sign that the Chinese government is seriously concerned by the mounting violence.

Mr. Li was “paying utmost attention” to the situation and had written “important comments” requesting all government departments to take seriously the problem of conflict between doctors and patients, according to a post on the government’s official Tencent Weibo, or microblog, account. He had ordered government departments to take measures to “protect medical order,” it said.

The reasons for the problems in China’s health care system are, by now, well known: a widespread lack of trust in doctors and hospital administrators, the high cost of care, long waiting times and short appointments — and corruption, at every level. A public that lacks basic knowledge about medical problems and outcomes is also a factor, commentators say.

But why turn to violence? One reason is illness can bankrupt a family. People who exhaust their savings on care want to see positive results and blame doctors when that’s not possible, commentators say.

While violent incidents in major cities and well-known hospitals receive the greatest attention, the problem is actually more severe in smaller or local hospitals, said Deng Liqiang, the head of the legal department of the Chinese Medical Doctors Association, in an interview with Yanzhao Metropolitan News, based in Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei Province.

“It’s not hard to discover that third-tier hospitals and regional medical centers are the disaster ground for medical conflicts,” said Mr. Deng.

Underfunding by the government is a major problem, Mr. Deng said.

“In the late 1980s, the state provided about 60 percent of investment in most public hospitals and then it fell from there,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “After medical reforms, by 2009, they were providing 20 percent, and the remaining 80 percent had to be covered with revenue generated by the hospitals.”

While the government has made few comments on the substance of the problems in the health care system, experts say another complaint of ordinary Chinese — the concentration of good hospitals in big cities and shortage of medical services in local communities — arises because the state is reluctant to decentralize medical care, fearing the rise of poorly trained medical personnel or outright quacks.

After the death of Dr. Wang, the Chinese Medical Doctors Association and three other professional groups issued a statement urging the government to better protect medical staff members.

“Why are doctors being injured without cease?” it asked. “In order to save lives, doctors and patients should become friends, not enemies,” it said.

Meanwhile, the central government’s National Health and Family Planning Commission has announced emergency measures: Hospitals should assign one security guard per 20 beds, and guards should account for no less than 3 percent of the total medical staff.