New Power Party Legislator Hung Tzu-yung (洪慈庸) yesterday denied accusations that she used her influence to help a constituent get a hospital bed.
“Based on what we know at the moment, no employee or aide made a request and we are still looking into who used my name to make the request,” she said, following rumors on the Professional Technology Temple (PTT) — the nation’s largest online academic bulletin board — that she had intervened to help a 74-year-old cancer patient get a bed at Taichung Veterans General Hospital.
A PTT post accusing her of influence peddling included a screenshot allegedly sourced from a hospital computer that showed a note next to the man’s file stating that Hung had asked that he be taken care of.
Long waits to be admitted to certain hospitals have reportedly resulted in some patients asking legislators and other politicians to intervene on their behalf to move them forward in line.
Hung denied knowing the patient, saying that she was “extremely perplexed” by the case, because her staff was still being organized on Feb. 15, the day on which it allegedly occurred.
She dismissed the possibility that an aide could have acted without authorization.
Hung said that she would consider putting in a good word for truly needy patients, but added that she would respect hospitals’ operating procedures.
“If there is someone who really needs help, we will still extend a hand,” she said. “As representatives of the people, this is our responsibility. If there is a patient who is seriously ill and is a member of a disadvantaged group that truly needs help, we will help.”
“The truth is that people only feel that they will be given a bed and cared for appropriately if there is a representative or special person who puts in a good word for them,” Hung said, adding that the perception reflected serious structural issues in the medical system.
Meanwhile, New Power Party Chairperson and Legislator Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said Hung has personally sworn that she was not involved, but added that he would not comment on the issue until an investigation discovers what happened.
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