Refusing IV Drips for a Child Patient Leads to Assault on a Doctor in His Late Sixties! Recent news is heartbreaking. Should every minor ailment warrant IV fluids? Should antibiotics be used for every common cold? Every Chinese person should proactively learn about common illnesses and medication usage—starting with reading a book.
IV drips proliferate everywhere, from villages to cities
During this year's Spring Festival, I traveled to a small mountain village in Yunnan and stayed at an inn run by a village doctor.This village doctor, I heard, came from a family of traditional Chinese medicine practitioners, with a stash of mountain-picked herbs always on hand. As evening fell, travelers from all corners of the country gathered in the inn's courtyard to chat. The doctor-innkeeper would bring out his handpicked herbs to brew teas for us, occasionally offering free pulse diagnoses to guests.At first, I assumed he was purely a TCM practitioner. But when a villager entered the courtyard seeking an IV drip, my perception of him was completely overturned. He guided the villager to a sofa in the main hall, asked a few brief questions, then skillfully prepared medication with the same hands that had just brewed our tea. He inserted needles and hooked up the IV drip.After attaching the IV, the village doctor sat in the main hall chatting with the villager about everyday matters, their conversation lively and animated. Were it not for the conspicuous IV bottle hanging there, one would never guess a doctor was treating a patient.
The main hall door remained wide open, and I sat in the courtyard, taking it all in.
After the villager left, I asked the doctor, "What was wrong with that person? He didn't seem seriously ill."
The doctor replied, "Nothing major—just a common cold with a fever."
"Did he really need an IV? Couldn't he just take some fever-reducing medicine?" I asked.
"IV fluids work faster, and the patient specifically requested it," he answered.
I wanted to tell him, "IV drips shouldn't be overused for common colds and fevers. The so-called 'quick relief' merely masks the fever symptoms temporarily—it doesn't eliminate the cold virus from the body." But the words died on my lips. This was a matter between the village doctor and the villagers—one willing to administer, the other willing to receive. What impact could my words, as an outsider, possibly have?With that thought, I held my tongue. I record this incident here to voice a helpless social reality: even today, when media constantly warns about the risks of IV drip abuse, scenes of such misuse continue to play out in nearly every corner of China!
As ordinary citizens, if you can't change certain poor medical practices, try changing yourself. Arm yourself with basic medical knowledge to understand the causes of your common minor ailments, so you can avoid the risk of receiving unnecessary IV drips for them.
Antibiotic injections and common cold treatment are worlds apart.
The most frequent occurrence of IV fluid abuse happens in treating minor illnesses like the common cold.
International statistics show that preschool children experience an average of 5 to 7 common colds per year, while adults average 2 to 3 colds annually. This makes the common cold a disease we all encounter and one we should be most familiar with.Logically, we should understand this illness best. Yet in reality, most of us don't truly grasp what the common cold entails. This lack of understanding is precisely why the misuse of antibiotic IV therapy for colds remains so prevalent.>Medically termed "upper respiratory tract infection" (commonly known as "URI"), the common cold involves acute infections in the upper respiratory tract—encompassing the nose, mouth, pharynx, and larynx. Symptoms include sneezing, runny nose, nasal congestion, fever, headache, sore throat, and cough. The definitive cause is viral infection.
As the common cold progresses, a small number of patients may develop bacterial complications. Antibiotics should only be used when bacterial infection is confirmed, not as a routine preventive measure as is currently widespread. In fact, whether bacterial complications arise after a cold depends entirely on the virulence of the invading virus and the individual's immune response—it has nothing to do with whether antibiotics were used early.As previously stated, antibiotics treat bacterial infections but are ineffective against viruses. Thus, administering antibiotic IV drips for the common cold constitutes antibiotic misuse. The dangers of such misuse have also been discussed earlier. We must firmly say "no" to the misuse of antibiotics for treating the common cold, and especially to the misuse of antibiotics via IV drips.