While the Taipei City Government vowed to track down Taipei Municipal Hoping Hospital's (TMHH) 32 missing health workers, a runaway nurse wrote a letter accusing the government of murder by trying to force her back to the hospital.
The letter, which appeared yesterday in a Chinese-language newspaper, pointed to her human rights and demanded the government grant the hospital's staff "the right to choose domestic quarantine."
The byline of the letter was "an anonymous TMHH nurse who has imposed home quarantine on herself."
"Putting us amongst the patients has encroached on our right to live," the nurse wrote.
Yesterday was the fifth day since TMHH was sealed off because of the hospital's outbreak of mass infections of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.
Ou Chin-der (歐晉德), a Taipei deputy mayor, said yesterday the city government has deployed civil-affairs officials and the police to trace the absconded hospital staff.
"They will be fined between NT$60,000 and NT$300,000. The police will bring them back to the hospital by force if necessary," Ou announced at a press conference.
However, the letter from the TMHH nurse said that despite government warnings of hefty fines and severe punishment, the threat of SARS is still greater than the penalties.
The letter continued, "The hospital has been phoning me, threatening to lay me off. But I still insisted on quarantining myself at home, because no punishment can exceed the terror cast by the shadow of SARS."
The letter said TMHH is specialized in dealing with infectious diseases. The hospital's facilities are old and its isolation equipment in need of repair, it said.
The nurse said TMHH's condition reminded her Taipei's old asylums that existed decades ago and said the government is treating SARS patients the same way it used to treat the insane.
According to the letter, by the time no more SARS cases are reported from the hospital, most of the health workers forced to stay with SARS patients will have died.
"Those who are not killed by the pressure may probably need counselling for the rest of their lives," the letter said.
The nurse added that the Constitution granted her the right to choose domestic quarantine.
"In such times of life and death, I choose to protect myself and defend the rights God gave me," she wrote.
Nevertheless, Wu Yung-tung (吳運東), president of the Taiwan Medical Association, and himself a doctor, commented on the letter by saying "medical work is team work."
"She should return to the hospital, as the law [the Communicable Disease Prevention Law (傳染病防治法)] stipulates," Wu said.
An official from Taipei's health bureau, who wished to remain anonymous, also said the nurse must return to the hospital, as the law demands.
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