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`Hoping Hospital' documentary on television tonight

"We were shocked that the numbers were kept from the public."

Feng Hsien-hsien, TV producer

While Taipei Municipal Hoping Hospital just joyfully celebrated its re-opening last weekend, doctors and nurses who have been through the hospital's SARS crisis said the hospital authority has not learned from the lessons during the crisis.

The hospital is still managed in a business-oriented style thus neglecting safety and human rights of front-line nurses and doctors, they say.

Also, the exact numbers as to how many cases of SARS infections were related to Hoping, and how many among them died, have not been released for public scrutiny.

All of the hidden faults and complaints were revealed in a documentary film titled Hoping Hospital, the first film documenting the chaotic situations before and after the hospital's closure.

The film was produced by Public Television Service (PTS) and is scheduled to be screened on the TV channel at 10pm tonight.

"It is too much to refer to us as heroes. We are just human beings, social beings. If we are not well-equipped and well-informed, how can we fight the SARS battle?" Lee Hui-wen (李慧玟), director of psychiatry department of Hoping Hospital, said at yesterday's press conference for the documentary film debut.

Hoping Hospital takes a humanistic perspective as it examines the 14 days during Hoping's closure, interviewing more than 40 medical staff and patients and 10 health officials, mapping out how the epidemic gradually went out of control in the hospital.

"At our B8 ward [with SARS patients], eight out of 16 nurses were infected and developed fevers. At the end, we had only two nurses taking care of nearly 16 SARS patients in the ward," said nurse Huang Pei-chi (黃佩琦) in the film.

"But even when one colleague had a fever and went down, we did not have time to think. We just knew that there should be someone taking up her work immediately," Huang said.

Huang's words pointed out the long-existing culture that profits have been of the highest priority in the hospital.

Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an Academic Sinica researcher and Taiwan's SARS expert, also appeared in the film recalling the situation a few days after Hoping's closure.

"When I went in there, the system in the hospital had completely broke down. It was like a huge dark room," Ho said in the film.

The documentary also revealed some important numbers previously unknown. According to Sylvia Feng (馮賢賢), the film's producer, there were in all 150 people infected at Hoping Hospital, and 35 out of them died from the disease and one committed suicide.

This number is three times higher than officially released numbers.

"We were shocked that the numbers were kept from the public," Feng said.

But she said she obtained the information through "a special channel."

The reception of the film's premiere was touching as Lee and Huang were in tears after seeing the film, looking back the tough days in the hospital.

"We are all grateful that the film have let the truth come to light," Lee said.

"But have I seen any change in the hospital after the crisis? Not yet," Chan Chang-chuang (詹長權), a public health professor at National Taiwan University, said

"If the re-opening of the Hoping and Jen Chi hospitals are trying to make the hospitals look like markets, then I'd say the two hospitals have not deeply reflected on what had happened," Chan said.
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