Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has cancelled a trip to Australia in order to deal with a crisis that erupted after city hospitals turned away a critically injured child.
"I think at this moment it is best to stay in the country to clear things up," Ma told reporters yesterday.
PHOTO: CNA
"It's a shame to the capital that the hospitals didn't do everything in their power to treat the girl," he said.
Ma decided to cancel the visit late Friday after a hospital allegedly admitted to sending the child away despite having a vacancy in its intensive care unit.
Ma had postponed the Australian trip scheduled for Thursday by two days amid mounting criticism over his handling of the issue.
He had also planned to visit Thailand and make a transit stop in Hong Kong.
Ma, who has been tipped to run for president in 2008, has seen his popularity hit a record low in several surveys this week after the incident provoked a public outcry over the poor state of Taipei's health-care system.
Meanwhile, the Municipal Jen Ai Hospital did not try its best to help, Taipei Deputy Mayor Yeh Chin-chuan (
"Jenai's emergency room was really full on the day," Yeh said. "But it would have been possible to spare an additional spot for the little girl if [the medical personnel at Jenai] had tried," Yeh said.
Yeh made his remarks during a press conference at city hall yesterday morning, after city officials interrogated 11 employees of Jen Ai for more the seven hours overnight on Friday.
According to the preliminary investigation by the Taipei City Government, all beds at Jenai were occupied when the girl arrived.
However, it would have been possible for the hospital to perform surgery on the girl and then try to obtain a free bed for her afterwards, but the hospital did not do so.
"In addition, interviewees told us that they did not have adequate equipment to treat the girl," Yeh said. "That was another reason why they decided to refer her to other hospitals."
In the meantime, Yeh said that a well-organized and complete report on the case will be available tomorrow. Copies of the report will be delivered to the Taipei City Council, the Control Yuan and the Taipei District Prosecutors' Office for further investigation and potential punishment of some personnel.
The four-year-old girl, who was only identified by her surname, Chiu, was delivered to Jen Ai at midnight on Jan. 10 with serious brain injuries after she was beaten up by her father.
When Chiu was sent to Jen Ai, Emergency Room Chief Lee Bin-chou (李彬州) decided to help Chiu and asked for approval from Jen Ai's Doctor-in-Chief Lin Chih-nan (林致男).
However, Lin and neurological surgeon Liu Chi-hwa (劉奇樺) decided to try to send Chiu to a nearby hospital because they believed that Jen Ai did not have the available staff and equipment to help Chiu. In addition, there was no bed was available for Chiu at the time.
Chiu was then referred to Tung General Hospital in Taichung County, which is approximately 150km away and two to three hours' drive from Taipei City.
As of press time yesterday, Chiu was still in a coma in an intensive care unit.
"I asked Lee to refer Chiu to a nearby hospital because all of our equipment and neurological surgeons were occupied, so it was impossible for us to take good care of her," Lin said. "However, it surprised me as well that the `nearby hospital' turned out to be Tung General Hospital in Taichung."
At the press conference yesterday, Ma said that the city government is supposed to take care of Taipei citizens no matter what.
"I am not a doctor, so it would be improper for me to comment on a medical decision like this," Ma said. "However, as a mayor and a Taipei citizen, I believe that the city government is obliged to take care of its own citizens no matter what."
Later last night, at around 7pm, under the lead of the Taipei City Government's department of health director Chang Heng (
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
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
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