WATCH: Reporter helps rescue nurse held hostage in China's latest case of hospital violence

Two hospitals in China saw staff members taken hostage yesterday in separate incidents – the latest in a string of violent attacks against medical staff across the country. Neither of the hostages were injured, local police say.

At the Hainan Provincial People’s Hospital in Haikou, a man surnamed Tao locked himself in a room and held a nurse at knifepoint for two hours.

Police were only able to enter the room and apprehend Tao after a journalist convinced Tao to let her interview him so he could tell his side of the story. When Tao opened the door to switch the nurse for the reporter, police burst in and tackled him.

Watch footage from the dramatic rescue below:

English-language news report from Xinhua (VPN required).

QQ video in Chinese for the VPN-less.

Police have not given a motive but noted that Tao was previously imprisoned in Guangdong for “involvement in a melee that caused multiple injuries,” reports Xinhua.

In a similar incident in Guangzhou yesterday morning, a hospital staffer was taken hostage by a knife-wielding man surnamed Zhang. The 29-year-old “was allegedly unhappy with a report from the hospital,” Xinhua notes.

In the past few years, China has faced a spate of similar cases where patients or their family members reacted violently to receiving bad news from doctors by lashing out at medical staff, sometimes killing them.

On Sunday, more than 600,000 physicians signed an online petition calling for greater protection and an end to violence against hospital staff after a man assaulted a doctor in Huizhou, Guangdong.

As we noted last year:

“National Ministry of Health statistics indicate that the number of violent incidents against hospitals and medical staff increased from about 10,000 in 2005 to more than 17,000 in 2010, while a survey by the Chinese Hospital Association reported an average of 27.3 assaults per hospital per year in 2012, up from 20.6 assaults per hospital per year in 2006. In 2012, an editorial in The Lancet described the situation as a ‘crisis’ for the practice of medicine in China.”