Amid public anger over a brain-damaged four-year-old girl's late-night rerouting to a Taichung hospital, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday said that Chang Heng (張珩), director of the city government's department of health, will leave his post and serve instead as superintendent of the Taipei Municipal United Hospital.
"It is inconceivable that Taipei, a city enjoying the best medical resources in Taiwan, could refer an abused child who needed emergency treatment to ... Taichung County, more than 100km away," Ma said at a press conference yesterday.
PHOTO: FANG PING-CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
Ma replaced Chang with deputy director Deng Su-wen (鄧素文), who will start work on Feb. 1.
Ma said that he could not blame Chang for the incident.
"It is not the EOC's [Emergency Operations Center] fault. It is, rather, an issue of hospital discipline and practitioner ethics," Ma said, referring to the Municipal Jenai Hospital which declined to operate on the girl, and neurological surgeon Liu Chi-hwa (劉奇樺), who was absent at the time.
Later last night, Ma, Chang and two unidentified doctors went to the Tung General Hospital in Tai-chung a day earlier than promised to visit the girl, surnamed Chiu. He said he felt sorry and sad for Chiu, who is in a coma.
"I believe there's something wrong with our medical system and we really feel sorry about the whole incident," Ma said.
Ma again stressed that Chang's removal was only an "adjustment" and not a punishment.
During his time as Taipei mayor, Ma has preferred to retain bureaucrats whose performance has received considerable criticism.
Earlier, the director-general of the Executive Yuan's Department of Health, Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁), told a Legislative Yuan committee that, "There are certainly enough beds in Taipei for an emergency case like this. It is a question of a doctor's professional judgment and hospital management. It is not an example of lack of communication at the EOC."
The Municipal Jenai Hospital, the first hospital to reject Chiu on Monday night, yesterday admitted it mishandled the affair and censured two surgeons yesterday.
Hospital president Wu Chen-lung (吳振龍) said night-duty surgeon Liu Chi-hwa and his colleague Lin Chih-nan (林致南) should have come to the emergency room to examine Chiu within half an hour.
Lin, who was also in the intensive care unit at the time, saw Chiu's brain X-ray, then called Liu, who was away from the hospital, saying she needed immediate surgery.
But both surgeons failed to go to the emergency room to help her.
"It is the doctors' responsibility to look after their patients. They failed their patient. They were in the wrong," Chang said.
As for the hospital's emergency section chief, Lin Kung-bin (李坤彬), who decided to transfer the patient after the surgeons failed to arrive, no penalty has been imposed.
The Cabinet's Department of Health said that the EOC is a well-established and properly functioning system.
"More than 200 hospitals nationwide are registered with the EOC and update information on the number of available beds every hour. [Taipei's] health personnel should improve their reporting procedures and get the message right," Chen said.
The EOC called 13 hospitals in Taipei that night in an anxious search for an intensive care bed and a qualified neurosurgeon, according to official communication records.
According to data released by the Cabinet's Department of Health yesterday, one bed was available for neurosurgery, 56 beds for newborns and 20 beds for general patients in the 13 hospitals contacted by 3am on Tuesday.
Yet no hospital had reported these vacancies to the EOC.
Meanwhile, the Taipei District Prosecutors' Office yesterday said that it had begun an investigation to see whether charges should be laid over the matter.
"The way [the medical personnel at Jenai Hospital] handled the case was strange indeed," spokesman Lin Bang-liang (林邦樑) said. "We are trying to work out what took place and what went wrong."
Lin said that if prosecutors discovered sufficient evidence of medical personnel mistreating the patient during her transfer, resulting in permanent mental or physical damage, they would be charged with negligence and face a jail term.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique