Dr. Huang Fang-yen (
It was he who reported the chaos within the Taipei Municipal Hoping Hospital and facilitated the sealing off of the hospital. Later on he shouldered greater responsibility in the battle by becoming the chief commander at the SARS Center Armed Force Sung Shan Hospital.
On April 22, when no one had yet suspected Hoping of having an outbreak, Huang received information saying that all was not well within the hospital. He immediately reported to Chen, and talked to the Department of Health (DOH). The DOH then sent officials into Hoping to investigate and decided to seal off the hospital on the April 24.
"I already had my doubts when the city's health bureau was sending SARS patients to my hospital instead of the municipal hospitals. [Former] director Chiu Shu-ti (
"I felt strange about Hoping saying they were not taking in any SARS patients and there was no SARS patients in their hospital while all the other medical centers had admitted to seeing odd numbers of SARS patients. The bad news on April 22 only confirmed my suspicions," Huang said.
Later when the Sung Shan Hospital was transformed into a SARS center, Huang was appointed as the chief commander to oversee the hospital's affairs late last month.
Huang said the idea of creating a SARS center had already been settled on in mid-March after he reported the SARS situation to Chen and discussed epidemic's possible development with Dr. Chang Shang-chwen (張上淳) of National Taiwan University Hospital, but the implementation was put off because of the unexpected SARS outbreak in Hoping Hospital.
"It was not that we [medical centers] refused to treat SARS patients. The original idea was to gather SARS patients together, and the medical centers would send some of their staff to work at the SARS center," Huang said.
Sung Shan deputy superintendent Tan Kuang-huan (譚光還) said this of Huang: "He is very careful with his work, and he can make detailed analysis of the situation. He is also a thinker with a vision. He also cares a lot about his colleagues and patients."
Huang, a 56-year-old anesthesiologist, graduated from National Taiwan University Medical School and is a long-time colleague of Taipei City Bureau of Health Director Chang Heng (張珩), who was also a deputy superintendent at Shin Kong Wu Ho-Su Memorial Hospital.
"Huang is a person with a sense of justice and a mission. He is a philanthropist. He often helps out whenever he sees people in need. He, like me, is not used to being bound by regulations. We are the kind who are not suitable for jobs as civil servants," Chang said.
"Contrary to the public's impression that he is closely associated with the DPP, I think he is not a person with strong political inclinations. He is willing to do a lot for his friends, and it happens that he and Chen are really close," Chang said.
When First Lady Wu Shu-chen (
Later when Wu went through rehabilitation, Huang's wife was her therapist, and the two families started to develop a good relationship.
As time went by, Huang became Chen's close friend and personal health consultant.
It was, therefore, no surprise that he became the core member of the president's medical team when Chen was elected.
When Vice President Annette Lu (
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching