Gwangju City Council Passes Resolution Urging Establishment of National Medical School in Jeonnam Region

The Environment and Welfare Committee of the Gwangju Metropolitan Council passed a resolution urging the establishment of a national medical school in the Jeonnam region at the extraordinary session held on the 19th.

The Environment and Welfare Committee (Chairman Jo Seok-ho) members stated, "Due to the lack of medical infrastructure in the Jeonnam region, patients from Jeonnam are being urgently transported to Gwangju, often missing the golden hour," and added, "We proposed this resolution to urge the establishment of a medical school in Jeonnam to improve the poor regional medical infrastructure."

While the government is showing moves to expand medical school quotas for the first time in 17 years, the establishment of new medical schools has not even been discussed in the medical issue consultation meetings.

The committee members argued, "In Jeonnam, where there is a shortage of essential and public medical infrastructure due to the inability to recruit doctors to work locally, simply expanding the quotas of existing medical schools cannot resolve the medical disparity between regions nor prevent the collapse of Jeonnam's essential and public medical system."

They also said, "Jeonnam is the only metropolitan local government without a medical school and a tertiary general hospital, resulting in 830,000 people annually traveling to other cities for medical treatment. The outflow of medical expenses due to this reaches 1.6 trillion won per year," adding, "Considering the regional characteristics such as frequent industrial accidents in aging industrial complexes and numerous islands where every second counts in emergency medical care, the establishment of a medical school and a tertiary general university hospital is a very reasonable demand."

This resolution is scheduled to be adopted at the 6th plenary session of the 320th meeting on the 24th.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.