A Beijing court has sentenced a man to nine months in prison for assaulting a doctor who refused to perform a caesarian section on his pregnant wife, Beijing Daily reported Thursday.

According to the verdict, published Tuesday, the Xicheng District People’s Court said the defendant, surnamed Zheng, had “severely disrupted medical procedures” at Peking University First Hospital last September. The prosecutor said Zheng insulted several medical staff and beat a doctor after the hospital refused the delivery procedure on the grounds that the woman “didn’t meet the criteria.”

Zheng was formally arrested in November, and the local procuratorate filed a case against him in May, charging him with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” according to the verdict.

Violence against health care professionals is relatively common in China. According to a 2017 report from the Chinese Medical Doctor Association, 66% of 146,200 medical professionals the group surveyed said they had experienced physical or verbal confrontations with their patients. In June, the National Health Commission and 27 other government departments issued a joint notice blacklisting 177 people with a history of such offences. (Image: Beijing Daily)