This week marks 1 year since Dr. Li Wenliang sounded the alarm over a large number of SARS-like patients at his Wuhan hospital, Your Content has learned.
Li was silenced by the police and kept working with his patients.
In early January he caught the new disease and died from it in February at age 33 leaving behind his pregnant wife.
Dr Li, 34, tried to send a message to fellow medics about the outbreak at the end of December 2019.
Three days later police paid him a visit and told him to stop. He returned to work and caught the virus from a patient.
He had been in hospital for at least three weeks.
He posted his story from his hospital bed prior to his death on social media site Weibo.
“Hello everyone, this is Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital,” the post begins.
The incident turned into a major scandal and prompted social media fury in the early days of what is now a global health crisis, New York Daily News previously reported.
The country’s highest anti-corruption agency said in a report that a local police station in Wuhan — the Chinese city where Dr. Li Wenliang worked and where the virus is believed to have originated — had “issued improper instructions” and followed “irregular” law enforcement procedures when it summoned the 34-year-old ophthalmologist and baselessly accused him of spreading rumors online, according to The South China Morning Post.
The Beijing-based Central Commission for Discipline Inspection also urged the department to punish the “relevant personnel” and revoke the reprimand order against the doctor.