Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) was discharged from Taipei Veterans General Hospital yesterday, almost three weeks since he underwent surgery for colon cancer.
Supported by his wife and a nurse, 88-year-old Lee walked to the hospital’s main entrance, where members of the press were waiting.
Lee thanked the media and the public for the concern they showed throughout his 17-day stay in hospital.
Photo: Lu Chun-wei, Taipei Times
He also expressed gratitude to the hospital staff, saying that their attentive care has enabled him to regain enough strength to talk to the media again.
Asked whether he was aware of the sudden death on Thursday of his friend Ng Chiau-tong (黃昭堂), the chairman of World United Formosans for Independence, Lee said he was shocked when he learned of Ng’s passing from a TV news report.
Lee said he had asked his aides to help with Ng’s funeral, adding that Ng was one of his best friends.
Ng, an activist for Taiwan’s independence, died on Thursday at the age of 79 after suffering heart failure during sinus surgery at a hospital in Taipei.
A tumor was detected in Lee’s colon during a routine health check at Taipei Veterans General Hospital on Oct. 31.
Lee had surgery the following day to remove the cancerous lesion, which was about 3.5cm by 2.5cm in size, from his right ascending colon.
Lee is now in good health and will not require chemotherapy or targeted therapy, his attending doctor Lin Chen-kuo (林振國) said.
“He just needs to return to hospital for a follow-up check in three months’ time,” Lin said.
Lee served as president from 1988 to 2000.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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