Tri-Service General Hospital on Monday held a party to celebrate the “rebirth” of patients badly burned in the Formosa Fun Coast (八仙海岸) fire on June 27, giving them a chance to share their ordeals over the past two months with reporters.
The hospital in Taipei’s Neihu District (內湖) decided to hold the celebration on Monday as eight of the 61 burn victims it had treated since the disaster were being discharged that day.
A teary-eyed Kuo Hsiu-ming (郭修銘), a 23-year-old who suffered burns to 40 percent of his body, thanked hospital workers and his family and said that although he suffered great pain, he felt grateful to be leaving the hospital because other victims remain in critical condition.
Photo: CNA
His 19-year-old brother, Kuo Ching-wei (郭晉瑋), who suffered burns to 10 percent of his body, said that his time in the hospital had not been difficult because the doctors and nurses had treated him like a friend.
Taipei Medical University student Cheng Chih-hsuan (鄭之瑄), who wore pressure bandages on both her legs, said that she had remained conscious after the fire and had been able to call her mother in Hualien County.
Cheng suffered burns over 25 percent of her body.
Kuo Chun-yu (郭俊佑), who is a navy volunteer, suffered burns to 34 percent of his body as well as an inhalation injury, and was completely clad in a pressure suit for the celebration.
Because Kuo Chun-yu has difficulty speaking, his mother expressed her gratitude and told reporters how touched she was when her son first stood up for two seconds during rehabilitation.
She said that going through therapy and rehabilitation is hard and painful, but encouraged other patients to remain positive to overcome their pain, believing that they would cherish life more than they did before the disaster.
Thirty-one of the fire victims at the hospital had been previously discharged or transferred to other hospitals, Tri-Service head of surgery Chen Shyi-gen (陳錫根) said.
Nearly 500 people were injured during an explosion and fire at a “Color Play Asia” event at the water park in New Taipei City’s Bali District (八里).
Eleven people have since died of their injuries and 263 remained hospitalized, 105 in intensive care units and 75 in critical condition as of Thursday last week, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said in its latest update.
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