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.
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
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
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