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Health department chief `tired'

Deputy director-general of the Department of Health, Lee Lung-teng (李龍騰), yesterday said his position has exhausted him.

"I am writing my memoirs of the past 100 days, and after I finish it, I am about to step down too," said Lee half-jokingly. He pointed out he wanted to keep a record of the SARS battle, but he had not yet decided whether to publish it or not.

Lee made the comments during a seminar entitled "Experiences and a Review of Involvement of the Public Health Field in the Prevention of SARS", held by the Taiwan Public Health Association (台灣公共衛生學會).

"There are a lot of things I would like to do, to help my teacher Chen [Chien-jen, the health department director]. However, there are a lot of things that still cannot be done even if I want it to be done," Lee lamented his fate as a government official.

He revealed that when he first came up with the idea of taking passengers' temperatures at the airport, he asked an official from the department to execute the plan by 3pm that day, but the official said it was impossible.

He then chided the official, and the order was later carried out in time for the media to report the scene at the airport at 4pm.

"When there is resistance to certain orders even in my own department, it is very difficult. But of course, some things simply cannot be done due to economic and political issues.

"There was a time in late March when I attended a confidential top-level meeting. When my superior asked whether there was a way to stop SARS from invading Taiwan, I said, without any political undertone, `independence,'" Lee said.

Lee explained that what he meant was the temporary severance of communications between China and Taiwan.

In the end, though, Lee said that if Chen asked him to stay he would; otherwise, if Chen thought it was time for someone new to take over, he would leave.

Meanwhile, the director-general of the Center for Disease Control Su Ih-jen, who was also present at the seminar, made some comments about the World Health Organization (WHO) and Taiwan.

"The result of Taiwan being left out of the WHO was that the Taiwanese medical field had come to have a much narrower vision without a touch of perspective. Medical students graduate with only money on their minds," Su said.
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