Women in Pingtung County’s Hengchun Township (恆春) looking to deliver their babies and patients seeking medical help in the area have been traveling to hospitals in other places due to a severe lack of medical resources at the local hospital.
According to the township’s household registration office, from 2009 until last year, with the exception of 2012, the number of births each year was about 230, but the local hospital only saw about 30 births in each of those years.
As 2012 was the Year of the Dragon, which is considered auspicious in Chinese culture, many couples tried to have a baby born within the year. Hengchun saw 260 children born in 2012, of which 50 were delivered locally.
A local woman, Pai Chia-cheng (白家丞), said that despite having had her routine checkups performed at the township’s Heng Chun Christian Hospital, her family worried about a lack of equipment at the hospital and insisted that she be transferred to a hospital in Donggang Township (東港), which they said was better equipped.
Pai said that most of her friends had also chosen to give birth in hospitals other than Heng Chun Christian Hospital, adding that very few people chose to give birth at the local facility.
Another local woman, a mother of two children surnamed Chang (張), said although the local hospital has a department of obstetrics and gynecology, its limited resources did not allow the option of a painless delivery and a lack of staff also forced the department to close down over weekends.
“It is no wonder locals choose other hospitals to deliver their babies,” Chang said.
Despite having a senior gynecologist inhouse — Cheng Wu-hung (鄭武宏) — the only hospital south of Banpingshan (半屏山) with a department of obstetrics and gynecology said it has difficulty maintaining its day-to-day operations.
Seventy-year-old Cheng, who has 30 years of medical experience overseas and served in rural parts of the US, returned to Taiwan in 2012 at the behest of a Heng Chung Christian Hospital director, Chen Yun-chih (陳雲址).
The primary problem with the department is the lack of funding to retain an anesthetist, Cheng said, adding that all other diagnosed conditions could be transferred to better-equipped hospitals.
Prior to an amendment to the law, as long as we had a nurse with an appropriate degree in anesthetics in the room, we could operate, the hospital said, adding that now they had to find certified doctors in the field.
While the hospital is able to borrow licensed anesthetists from other hospitals on weekdays, it cannot perform surgeries on weekends even if the surgeons are available, the hospital said.
Because of its scant resources it treats mostly women who have already given birth or people without the financial means to go to other hospitals, the hospital said, adding that the community harbors great distrust of the hospital for the same reason.
If the hospital delivers a premature baby, it would have to transfer the mother and infant to the closest hospital with the facilities to keep the baby alive, which is hundreds of kilometers away, the hospital said.
Cheng said the government should consider using helicopters for swift transfers of patients between hospitals, adding that rural hospitals in other nations usually have helicopters on standby to shorten transfer times.
Rural areas domestic and abroad share the potential problems of not having well-built roads, and given that there is an airport nearby, the government should put it to better use, Cheng said.
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