The third annual Global Healthcare Awards sponsored by the Taiwan Global Healthcare Association are to take place at the Ministry of Health and Welfare today, honoring three individual winners and five team winners for their long-term medical contributions beyond national borders.
In addition to considering the contributions of Taiwanese healthcare practitioners who volunteer on oversea medical missions, this year’s criteria included the government’s New Southbound Policy and medical diplomacy, association secretary-general Lee Wui-chiang (李偉強) said, adding that those who had made distinguished innovations in medical technology or who had attracted oversea students or patients to Taiwan were also among those honored.
Three physicians won the individual awards: Jeng Seng-feng (鄭勝峰) of E-Da Hospital in Kaohsiung, Huang Chih-kun (黃致錕) of China Medical University Hospital (CMUH) in Taichung and Wei Fu-chuan (魏福全) of Taipei Chang Gung Memorial Hospital (CGMH).
A medical team from Shuang Ho Hospital in the Marshall Islands, the Chi Mei Medical Service, the Hualien Tzu Chi Hospital’s (HTCH) International Health Service Center, a medical team from Far Eastern Memorial Hospital in Belize and CGMH’s International Medical Center in Linkou won the team awards.
Huang, superintendent of CMUH’s Body Science and Metabolic Disorders International Medical Center, has been practicing minimally invasive surgery and bariatric surgery for 14 years, and accomplished the world’s first single-incision transumbilical laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (a bariatric procedure) in 2008.
He has trained about 60 physicians from 15 nations in bariatric and metabolic surgery over the past 12 years, and was the founding chairman of the International Excellence Federation for Bariatric and Metabolic Surgery, which includes more than 70 hospitals and metabolic centers around the world.
Dietary habits differ by region, and obesity symptoms and complications, as well as suitable treatment methods, also differ, so many physicians in Asian nations prefer to learn advanced bariatric and metabolic surgery in Taiwan, rather than in Western nations, he said.
HTCH superintendent Lin Shinn-Zong (林欣榮) said that the hospital’s Stem Cells Center has the world’s third-largest and Asia’s largest online marrow donor databank, and has received a record 5,000 bone marrow donations in the 25 years since it was established.
In addition to providing a large number of leukemia patients with bone marrow transplants, the hospital’s International Health Service Center has worked with the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation to send medical volunteers to assist at major disaster sites around the world and to help train more than 1,900 healthcare practitioners from 19 nations, Lin said.
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