Two years ago, Taipei Municipal Hoping Hospital surgeon Chou Ching-kai (
Fearing infection, Chou left the hospital just before the quarantine began and remained at home, defying orders from the Taipei City Government to return.
Last month, the Taipei High Court announced that Chou's refusal to return to the hospital in the midst of the outbreak did not violate the Doctor's Law (
PHOTO: CHENG HSUEH-YUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
While expressing gratitude for the verdict, Chou, along with family members of people who died from the SARS virus and human-rights activists yesterday urged the Taipei City Government to cancel all reprimands levied on hospital staff and called on the public to pay attention to human rights issues that have emerged as a result of the SARS outbreak -- even though the threat from the virus has long subsided.
"I chose to voluntarily quarantine myself at home during the SARS outbreak, which was an appropriate move in preventing the spread of the virus," said Chou, dean of the hospital's general surgery department. "However, the Taipei City Government called me a `runaway doctor' and used me as a scapegoat to cover their mistakes, which caused more casualties through the use of the quarantine."
As a result of the verdict, Chou yesterday said he planned to file a civil suit against Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
Amid the 2003 SARS outbreak, 975 hospital staff members were ordered to remain at the hospital as part of a quarantine. Chou and other three staff members failed to show up for the quarantine. The BOH then published their names and said they were "missing."
Later, the staff members were forced to return to the hospital. The city also filed lawsuits against them for alleged violations of the Communicable Disease Prevention Law (
During a press conference held by the Taiwan Association for Human Rights yesterday, Yen Chueh-an (
"First, Taipei City Government monopolized the situation. The decision to implement a quarantine -- which violated human rights -- only caused more casualties," Yen said. "Then, the BOH blamed the casualties on the doctors, and thus hurting their reputations."
The anti-SARS measures adopted by the authorities faced serious public criticism at the time, since the virus continued to spread despite the quarantine measures.
Hsu Ming-fei (徐銘馡), whose uncle died of SARS at the hospital, questioned the effectiveness of the quarantine and said that the city's bungling of containment measures caused needless deaths and illnesses and scarred their families.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS