Taiwan is assisting in the establishment of a liver transplant center in Guatemala, as part of the nation’s efforts to provide much-needed medical care to its diplomatic allies, Florencia Hsieh (謝妙宏), deputy director-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of Latin American and Caribbean Affairs, told a regular news briefing yesterday.
Hsieh said the liver transplant center will be set up in the National Cancer Institute, the only public hospital in Guatemala providing cancer care.
Once the center opens, it will be the first medical center capable of performing liver transplantation surgery in Central America, Hsieh said.
Taiwan has diplomatic relations with all the countries in the region except for Costa Rica.
To prepare for the establishment of the liver transplant center, 13 Guatemalan physicians completed a year-long internship program for clinical practice in liver transplantation that started in October 2011 at the Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, with the ministry providing scholarships, Hsieh said.
They were trained at the hospital in plastic surgery, anesthesiology, pediatrics and liver transplant surgery, the ministry said.
The government will equip Guatemala with the necessary medical equipment to aid local doctors in the country in performing liver transplants, Hsieh added.
Meanwhile, a baby who needs a liver transplant to survive was flown to Taiwan on Friday last week for treatment and an operation that will be performed free of charge next week by a surgical team at Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Hsieh said.
The surgery would have cost US$50,000, 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:
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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