A Taiwanese man who was trapped in a crevice for 27 hours on Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, in Australia returned home to Kaohsiung yesterday, where he is to receive follow-up medical treatment.
Yang Cheng-hsiao (楊成效), 27, was admitted to Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital after being flown back to Taiwan, and now faces medical costs his mother said he cannot afford.
He suffered multiple fractures to his face, chest, ribs, spine and limbs in a fall on Uluru.
Photo: CNA
His family paid NT$300,000 (US$9,687) in medical bills at Alice Springs Hospital in Australia, but Yang still owes about NT$2 million in rescue and aerial transport charges, his mother said.
Yang requires follow-up medical treatment, she said, adding that his family cannot afford the costs and is calling for financial assistance.
“We will pay it back when we are capable of doing so,” she said in an interview with local reporters, accompanied by Kaohsiung Social Affairs Bureau officials and Formosa SOS physician Lu Li-hua (盧立華).
Formosa SOS is an emergency rescue team organized by Tung’s Taichung Metro Harbor Hospital that offers international transport services.
Lu, who is also the chief executive of the Tung’s hospital’s emergency medical treatment department, urged Taiwanese on working vacations overseas to secure legitimate insurance prior to leaving Taiwan.
He said that young travelers should always buy insurance to ensure they receive adequate reimbursement for medical expenses if they have an accident.
Yang was withdrawn from Taiwan’s National Health Insurance system because he failed to pay a monthly premium while he was in Australia, Lu said.
Even though Yang has resumed payments, he is not able to receive immediate reimbursement for his upcoming medical costs at Chang Gung Hospital, Lu said.
Yang, who was on a working holiday in Australia, fell 20m into a crevice on Uluru on June 11 after straying off the normal route.
He was rescued the next day.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,