Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) yesterday said the ministry would require doctors and hospitals to register all overseas organ transplants before the end of the year.
Political pundit Wu Hsiang-hui (吳祥輝) last month cited passages from a 2014 book titled The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China’s Secret Solution to its Dissident Problem and accused Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) of being involved, reigniting the controversy that surrounded the 2014 Taipei mayoral election.
Ethan Gutmann, the author of the book, told a news conference in Taipei on Tuesday that Ko was a “middleman” for Taiwanese patients wanting an organ transplant in China.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
Ko yesterday rejected the accusation and asked for an apology.
At a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee yesterday, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chao Tien-lin (趙天麟) said that, according to Taiwan Organ Registry and Sharing Center data, 3,128 people between April 2005 and August this year had organ transplants overseas.
While the law requires information about the transplanted organ, the nation and hospital where the operation was performed, and the physician who performed the transplant to be entered into Taiwan’s organ transplant registry system, only 108 cases (5.61 percent) had registered the required information, he said.
Moreover, there were 3,493 visits to overseas hospitals between October 2006 and August this year, 3,308 (94.7 percent) of which were to China and 185 to other countries, Liao said.
While China’s system might lack transparency, the statistics showed that the registration system for overseas transplants seemed to be failing, as none of the hospitals that provide postoperative or follow-up care to these patients have been punished for failing to register the required information, Chao said.
“We will ask the hospitals to complete the information for the organ transplant registration,” Chen said, adding that the ministry previously did not require the hospitals to provide the missing data for overseas organ transplants, but would require them to submit the data, hopefully by the end of the year.
For the cases where the data remain incomplete, the ministry would also consider putting on hold payments for National Health Insurance-funded drugs that organ transplant recipients need, he said.
“Organ transplant is a serious issue and accusations against any individual should be made with evidence to back them up,” Chen said, when asked about Gutmann’s accusation against Ko.
Unfounded accusations can hurt any industry, not just the medical sector, he added.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Taiwan Railways Corp (TRC) today announced that Shin Kong Mitsukoshi has been selected as the preferred bidder to operate the Taipei Railway Station shopping mall, replacing the current operator, Breeze Development Co Ltd. Among eight qualified firms that delivered presentations and were evaluated by a review committee, Shin Kong Mitsukoshi was ranked first, while Breeze was named the runner-up, the rail company said in a statement. Contract negotiations are to proceed in accordance with regulations, it said, adding that if negotiations with the top bidder fail, it could invite the second-ranked applicant to enter talks. Breeze in a statement today expressed doubts over
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