The Ministry of Health and Welfare (MHW) yesterday announced its allocation of cadaver skin to hospitals to address the needs of burn victims of the Formosa Fun Coast (八仙海岸) water park fire.
The ministry made the announcement after meeting with burn specialists yesterday morning to discuss the allocation of imported cadaver skin in response to the June 27 fire in New Taipei City’s Bali District (八里) that injured 495 people and killed two.
The Taiwan Society of Plastic Surgery (TSPS) was put in charge of coordinating efforts between the ministry and medical institutions treating the burn victims in relation to the allocation of the skin.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has so far imported a total of 24.7m2 (7.47 ping) of cadaver skin, including 3.7m2 from the US that arrived on Friday night, 9m2 from the Netherlands that arrived on Saturday and 12m2 from the US that was due to arrive last night.
TSPS director-general Ma Hsu (馬旭) said based on the presumption that each percentage of burn wounds need 120cm2 of cadaver skin, the total amount required for a single surgical debridement could be between 3,600cm2 and 4,800cm2 for one severely burned patient, meaning the imported skin would only be enough for about 51 patients.
“Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital is responsible for treating the most victims and the largest burn surface area, followed by National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH), Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Mackay Memorial Hospital and Tri-Service General Hospital,” Ma said.
Ma said the allocation of the cadaver skin does not take into account the size of hospitals, adding that the nation would continue to import more supplies and that the US was able to provide an estimated 17m2 of cadaver skin each week.
Taiwan Medical Association secretary-general Tsai Ming-chung (蔡明忠) said that a total of about 150m2 of cadaver skin is needed to treat all the burn victims from the fire.
He said the FDA has placed an order with the US for about 100m2 of skin.
However, NTUH Department of Plastic Surgery director Tai Hao-chih (戴浩志) said burn victims who sustained burns to more than 60 percent of their bodies should be given priority in the allocation of imported cadaver skin, as they are more prone to infection and sepsis.
“The nearly 500 patients should be divided into three categories based on the severity of their burns: those with burns covering 20 percent to 40 percent of their body, 40 percent to 60 percent and more than 60 percent,” Tai said.
Tai said victims in the last category should have priority in terms of allocation of cadaver skin.
According to the ministry’s victim monitoring statistics, the 495 victims suffered an average burn size of 43.7 percent of their bodies, with 234 sustaining burns to more than 40 percent of their bodies, including 24 who suffered burns to more than 80 percent of their bodies.
As of 12pm yesterday, 434 of the victims remained hospitalized, with 237 in critical condition.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods