A cross-border truck driver died of natural causes after he spent more than six hours in a Hong Kong public hospital without receiving treatment, the Coroner’s Court has ruled.
A five-member jury delivered the unanimous verdict on Friday after Coroner Arthur Lam Hei-wei found no evidence to suggest Wong Yun-chuen’s death at Tuen Mun Hospital in 2021 involved an accident or a slip-up in medical procedure.
Lam said he believed the five-day inquiry represented “a big step towards the truth”, but Wong’s elder sister expressed disappointment that little mention was made in court about what she saw as a breach of a duty of care for the deceased.
Wong died at the age of 55 after he was transferred from a medical institution in mainland China on August 18 that year for suspected lymphoma.
He was admitted to the hospital’s isolation ward at 1.16pm for Covid-19 testing and a preliminary check, but the results were still pending when his elder sister found him cold and lifeless at 7.50pm the same day.
Wong was declared dead at 8.18pm after a failed resuscitation attempt.
A postmortem examination identified the direct cause of death as peritonitis, or inflammation of the inner lining of the abdomen, a complication of T-cell lymphoma.
The nursing officer responsible for the isolation ward on the day concerned said the hospital’s manpower was stretched thin that day by other patients requiring immediate treatment.
Another doctor said the hospital had no reason to suspect at the time that Wong had an acute condition.
But medicine professor Timothy Rainer, who provided an independent analysis for the inquest, argued there was sufficient basis for medical staff to assess the severity of Wong’s ailment, citing the mainland hospital’s opinion that the cancer had begun to spread.
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