The central government and Kinmen County have agreed that a medical transport helicopter should be permanently stationed in the island county, with the county to pay a portion of the costs, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Yang Cheng-wu (楊鎮浯) said on Friday.
Yang, KMT Legislator Chen Hsueh-sheng (陳雪生) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Yang Yao (楊曜) worked for the deal, Yang Cheng-wu said.
Yang Cheng-wu said he considered it his foremost goal to persuade the Ministry of Health and Welfare to station a medivac helicopter in Kinmen, adding that he was glad to see his mission accomplished last month at the conclusion of the bidding process.
Photo: Wu Cheng-ting, Taipei Times
The medivac helicopter would cut the transport time to major hospitals by at least half, which could make the difference between life and death, Yang Cheng-wu said.
The Kinmen County Government was asked to pay 70 percent of the helicopter fees, Yang Cheng-wu said, adding that legislators convinced the ministry to lower the fees by 20 percent.
The ministry agreed to the rate because of Kinmen’s location and lack of medical resources, Yang Cheng-wu said.
The rate the Kinmen government is to pay for the helicopter’s maintenance is to decline in accordance with the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures Act (財政收支劃分法), Yang Cheng-wu said
The county can expect its first medivac by the middle of next year, he said.
Yang Cheng-wu called for closer cooperation between the health ministry and the Ministry of Transportation and Communications when building the helipad and examining the helicopter.
Safety is of the utmost concern, Yang Cheng-wu said, adding that the central government should make a schedule to introduce the service available to local residents.
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