Top Red Cross Official Fired In Hubei For Failures During Coronavirus Outbreak
TOP RED CROSS OFFICIAL FIRED – A top Red Cross official working in Hubei, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak has been dismissed from duty.
The Wuhan coronavirus outbreak has spread fear and panic among residents in China. Currently, there are almost 500 deaths and over 23,000 infected with the coronavirus.
Red Cross Vice President Zhang Qin was fired for dereliction of duty while receiving and distributing donated funds and goods. Along with him, two officials received disciplinary warnings for the same charge.
According to a report from ABS-CBN, the local Red Cross chapter was swamped with anger online as both social media users and the Chinese media questioned why doctors in the frontline still lacked equipment despite donations pouring in.
Under the local law, Chinese Authorities were tasked to supervise Red Cross’ performance of its functions and duties and exercise supervision over its activities.
As per the report, the Red Cross Society of China stated that it had received 849 million yuan ($121 million) in cash donations and supplies on January 31. However, the problem was locals still had to wait for hours just to receive small amounts of equipment.
In addition, the Chinese news outlet Caixin reported that the Red Cross Warehouses in Wuhan were stocked full of donations and supplies. This included medical masks and other essentials.
But, Secretary-General Jagan Chapagain stated that the “deliberate” decision by the Red Cross officials to withhold a number of donated masks in Wuhan as they were unsafe for use by health professionals on the frontline of the battle.
Clearly the Wuhan Red Cross hasn’t dealt with this type of situation recently, (and) they had to massively scale up in a short period of time, so to have some shortcomings is not totally unnatural,
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