Residents of Puli Township (埔里), Nantou County, are mourning the death of a medical missionary who spent more than three decades caring for people there.
Alfhild Jenfen, who first came to Taiwan in 1962, passed away in Norway on Sunday, the Puli Christian Hospital said. She was 92.
She will be remembered most notably for her efforts to change the lives of children suffering with polio, the hospital said.
Jenfen arrived to work at the hospital as a surgical anesthetist at a time when polio was prevalent among Aboriginal children in remote areas of the country.
Jenfen met her husband Bjarne Gislefoss, who was working as a senior nurse at the hospital, and the two devoted themselves to treating Aboriginal children and members of the local community.
The couple collected donations from abroad to establish a special unit for children with polio in 1966.
They also invited specialist physicians to visit Taiwan to work in the unit and arranged classes for children whose long hospital stays meant they missed out on schooling. Their efforts helped the hospital become a pioneer in the treatment of polio in Taiwan.
Jenfen received two Medical Dedication Awards from the government in 1990 and 1991, and the couple were granted honorary permanent residency in 2002.
Jenfen and Gislefoss retired in 1997, and they split their time between Taiwan and Norway.
Jenfen fell ill on a trip to Norway four years ago and was never able to return to Taiwan.
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