The calls for zero-tolerance to any form of violence against medical workers are definitely necessary after doctors and nurses were targets of violent incidents in six hospitals nationwide over the last 10 days, leading to one death and several injuries.

Such calls from the country's four medical associations are in line with those institutions' responsibilities for medical workers' safety. And certainly more timely law-enforcement intervention is needed to prevent anger at doctors and nurses escalating into violence.

But fundamentally more needs to be done to address the deteriorating relations between doctors and their patients, and broader retrospection is needed to examine the causes.