I want to return to the case of Dr Mak, who was, from the available evidence, caught up in a miscarriage of justice that arose because of a lack of effective interprofessional communication in the legal process.
14 June 2021 is the day in the Chinese calendar to celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival. These local holidays are a reminder of the deep cultural heritage enjoyed by the Chinese people.
In Volume 1, Issue 1 of this journal I wrote an article entitled: ‘From PIP to DC-CIK to the Sorcerer’s Apprentice: a medico-political minefield’. Little did I know or anticipate what a mess this was going to become: a medico-legal mess with ignorant lawyers and arrogant doctors demonstrating how stupidity and rapacious hypocrisy can twist and distort reality for the purposes of extracting a bizarre social revenge with little sense of justice.
On the 8 December 2020, Justice Judianna Barnes sentenced Dr Mak Wan-ling to three and a half years in prison. The charge for which she was found guilty was gross negligence manslaughter (GNM). She had injected a contaminated blood sample into a patient and the patient had died. The conviction was fundamentally flawed.
Blindness following filler injections is a devastating complication for the patient and the practitioner.
This will be the last ‘Letter from Hong Kong’. I began back in April with a simple message, wear masks.
Gluteal contouring has become an extremely popular procedure led by celebrity images and patient requests.
It is seven months since I wrote the first ‘Letter from Hong Kong’. The message then was simple: “Fear is okay, panic is not and wear masks”. It is one month since I wrote the last letter and that message? “Life goes on and will go on no matter what.”
Today is National Day in Hong Kong. A celebration of the founding of the People’s Republic of China on 1 October 1949.
James Frame looks at the psychological effects of lockdown on plastis surgery patients.
Since March 2020 it was sensible medical practice to consider making all possible beds in the NHS available to potentially admit ill patients with COVID-19. The expected admission rate was supposed to risk overwhelming the NHS, so independent sector facilities apparently volunteered and were then contracted to the NHS as priority, with full remuneration for their losses, and all private practitioners were effectively frozen out from seeing, admitting and operating on their own self pay patients.
So much can change in just a few weeks. In Hong Kong after three weeks with no new cases we started to see a third wave in mid-July. More and more cases with no obvious source.