Taipei City Government yesterday named Shin Kong Wu Ho Su Memorial Hospital deputy superintendent Chang Heng (
Chang takes over from Chiu Shu-ti (
PHOTO: LU CHUN-WEI, LIBERTY TIMES
Chang, 47, is an adviser to the city government and helped Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) set up the Chin Feng Huang rescue team, a special squad under the Fire Bureau that provides emergency treatment similar to that provided by the ambulance service. He also wrote the medical section of Ma's white paper published in the run-up to the mayoral election five years ago.
"We are in an unfortunate time. I only hope that we can do our best to control the [SARS] epidemic," Chang said in a television interview yesterday. "At the same time, we should learn from past experience and use it to fight the disease."
Unlike his predecessor, Chang has abundant clinical experience.
He graduated and obtained a doctor's degree in clinical medicine from National Taiwan University Medical School.
Chang began his career at National Taiwan University Hospital, specializing in cardiac surgery. He transferred to Shin Kong Hospital in 1993.
As well as naming a new health chief yesterday, the city government said that it had reversed its decision to punish three doctors at Hoping Hospital for failing to report SARS cases there.
Deputy Taipei Mayor Ou Chin-der (
Pai Hsiou-hsiung (白秀雄), another deputy mayor who investigated the incident, told a television news channel that fax machines at the Bureau of Health were broken at that time and might have not have received the faxes.
Ou said he had asked the bureau to restore the doctors' good names as soon as possible.
"Since we have been rather quick in punishing the doctors, we should correct our mistakes just as quickly," Ou said.
Chang Yu-tai's wife said no apology was needed.
"We are grateful for the city government's fast response. We are not looking for apologies from the city government. It is enough that they cleared up the misunderstandings in public during the press conference," she said.
Meanwhile, the city government yesterday decided to revoke the doctor's certificate of Hoping Hospital's former superintendent Wu Kang-wen (吳康文) for concealing the SARS outbreak at his hospital.
The board also decided to suspend Lin Jung-ti (
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
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ECONOMIC COERCION: Such actions are often inconsistently applied, sometimes resumed, and sometimes just halted, the Presidential Office spokeswoman said The government backs healthy and orderly cross-strait exchanges, but such arrangements should not be made with political conditions attached and never be used as leverage for political maneuvering or partisan agendas, Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said yesterday. Kuo made the remarks after China earlier in the day announced 10 new “incentive measures” for Taiwan, following a landmark meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) in Beijing on Friday. The measures, unveiled by China’s Xinhua news agency, include plans to resume individual travel by residents of Shanghai and China’s Fujian
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