Maria Godelieva Claeys, a Belgian Catholic nun who has devoted most of her life to taking care of premature infants in Taiwan, was on Saturday granted Republic of China (ROC) citizenship.
“This is my home,” the 83-year-old sister said after receiving her ROC identification card from government officials in recognition of her contributions.
Claeys, of the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, has served in Taiwan since 1963, when she began looking after premature infants at the then-St Joseph’s Hospital in Taipei.
Photo: CNA
The hospital was established by a group of Immaculate Heart of Mary sisters from Belgium in the early 1960s, providing care and medication for disadvantaged mothers and children, and was once known as the hospital that admitted the highest number of premature infants in Taiwan.
Care for premature infants in Taiwan at the time was relatively underdeveloped, and the cost of treatment was high, Claeys said.
The hospital at the time had no means of purchasing incubators, which were considered a luxury medical device, and could only borrow them from other hospitals, she said.
It was not until 1964 that the hospital acquired an incubator of its own, followed by another 12 five years later, Claeys said.
As there were not enough incubators to keep up with the number of newborns, three to four babies would often have to be squeezed into one, she said.
Due to overcrowding and the lack of space, the hospital was relocated to New Taipei City in 1981 and was later renamed Cardinal Tien Hospital.
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