The first Taiwanese doctor to join Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said yesterday that he was inspired to join the international medical and humanitarian aid organization after visiting an MSF photo exhibition when he was still a medical student.
Sung Jui-hsiang (宋睿祥), a surgeon at Keelung Chang Kung Memorial Hospital, shared his experience working for the organization at a “Forgotten Wars” news conference sponsored by the hospital.
He said when he was in his fourth year in Taipei Medical University, he visited an MSF photo exhibition and was transfixed by the picture of a tiny, emaciated Afghan child with desperate eyes that stayed with him for a “long, long time.”
“I wanted to be a different doctor,” Sung decided then, saying the picture had changed him and opened up his horizons.
During his time as an intern, he applied to join the organization through its Hong Kong office and went to Liberia to perform his first tour of humanitarian service the following year.
The 34-year-old doctor said his decision then was met with opposition from his family.
He was grateful for his father’s support, but his girlfriend left him.
Last August, Sung went to Yemen to perform surgery amid the country’s civil war.
The hospital was set up in the middle of a combat area, Sung said. At night, artillery fire would flash through the sky, similar to firecrackers lighting the sky on Lunar New Year.
“It would be a lie if I said I was not afraid,” he said.
He spent three months in Yemen and performed more than 1,000 surgeries. Faced with the dead and injured every day, he realized how vulnerable people are.
Living is something to be cherished, he said, and “happiness is not something to be taken for granted.”
Sung said people who pursue medicine should have love and passion, and he urged more local doctors to join the organization and spread more love from Taiwan.
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