More than 30 families whose babies once stayed at Taipei Veterans' General Hospital's (TVGH) premature ward returned to the hospital yesterday for an annual reunion.
Because of its size and facilities, risky pregnancies are often referred to TVGH, with up to one-third of babies delivered in the hospital considered premature to some degree, said Cheng Ya-hui (鄭雅慧), deputy head nurse of the newborn intensive unit.
"This annual event is a chance for parents to meet other families with preemies and support each other," Cheng said.
PHOTO: CHIEN JUNG-FONG, TAIPEI TIMES
"We also have doctors and staff on hand to give out advice on helping premature babies grow up to be healthy children and adults," she said.
Many children suffer lasting effects from being born prematurely, Cheng said.
"With modern medicine, we can do a lot more for them than we used to," she said. "But it is still important that parents are prepared for the possible lasting effects."
Two-year-old Lu Chi-an (
"She looked so little. I thought to myself, how is it possible?" her father, Lu Guang-hau (
His daughter could not leave the ward until she was six months old and weighed 2,000g -- still less than the average new born.
Lu Guang-hau said that when doctors told him of the possible complications his daughter might experience because she was born prematurely, he wondered whether she could have a good, normal life.
And while her development may be delayed compared to other infants of her age, Lu said he was happy that she is normal.
"If you consider the day she left the hospital as her birthday, then she's not really delayed [compared to others]," Lu said.
Yeh Wan-yu (
Yeh, 27 weeks into her pregnancy then, was in a night market when she went into premature labor. She gave birth the next day to three identical girls.
"I cried when I saw them because they looked like aliens," Yeh said.
The girls, just 27 weeks along, were wrinkled, connected to a number of tubes and still covered in downy fetal body hair.
Unlike Lu Chi-an, Yeh's daughters did suffer some effects as a result of being born prematurely, including underdeveloped lungs and weaker left eyes that require daily rehabilitation.
"I can't help but wonder if I could have done things differently so they would not have been born prematurely," she said.
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