A 25-year-old man yesterday died of injuries he sustained in the Color Play Asia disaster at Formosa Fun Coast (八仙海岸) last month, bringing the death toll from the incident to eight.
Chen Meng-hung (陳孟宏) was pronounced dead at Mackay Memorial Hospital in Taipei before midday after his family decided not to continue medical attempts to save him, the hospital said.
Chen suffered second-to-third-degree burns over 55 percent of his body, as well as inhalation burns, the hospital said.
Photo: CNA
His condition was listed as stable, but later deteriorated, it said.
Of the nearly 500 people injured in the June 27 incident, 175 people remained in critical condition as of Sunday.
The accident occurred when cornstarch powder ignited at a party at the Formosa Fun Coast water park in New Taipei City’s Bali District (八里), engulfing partygoers in fire.
New Taipei Social Welfare Department officials expressed sadness over Chen’s death and said they would give his family a funeral subsidy of NT$1 million (US$31,906).
In related news, a government-sponsored organ sharing center yesterday said that the incident appears to have led to a spike in organ donations around the country, with one donation occurring almost daily over the past three weeks.
Organs have been taken from 20 donors in the past three weeks, including seven cases of skin donation, Taiwan Organ Registry and Sharing Center chairman Lee Po-chang (李伯璋) said.
Those figures compare with an average of 15 organ donations a month during the past three years and 30 skin donations a year. One person who donated organs to those injured in the dust explosions made his intentions known in a note he wrote before committing suicide.
Only his skin, corneas and bones were taken as other organs were damaged and not suitable for use.
In recent years, blood banks around the country have often been replenished by donors who give blood in response to major disasters, such as an air crash or the gas explosions in Kaohsiung last year.
Stories of organ donations after people were killed in accidents have inspired more people to follow suit.
Among them was Su Chia-sheng (蘇家陞), a medical student who died on July 10 of injuries sustained in the water park explosion.
Su’s parents decided to donate his organs to fulfill his mission as a doctor.
However, Liu Chia-chi (劉嘉琪), deputy chief executive officer at the organ registry center, cautioned that decisions to make organ donations based on impulse are not sustainable.
With more than 8,700 people in the country waiting for an organ transplant, Liu said she hoped more people would see organ donation as a way of extending one’s life and urged people to show their willingness to donate organs on their health insurance cards.
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:
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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