Sat, Jul 22, 2000 page2

• Detention home dogged by death

  HEALTH CARE The family of a man who died while in the drug rehabilitation program has accused the home of negligence and colluding with a hospital

  • By Chuang Chi-Ting / STAFF REPORTER
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  Relatives of a man who died of a stroke last week while attending the Taipei Detention House's (台北看守所) anti-amphetamine addiction program yesterday accused the Detention House of not sending him to the right hospital on time and of shirking their responsibility.

  The body of the victim, Liao Shi-hua (廖旭華), a Taipei County resident, remained in the hospital a full week after his death.

  The charges were made during a press conference yesterday.

  Coming only four months after the case of an Aboriginal woman You Shiang-hua (游香花), who became brain damaged one week after joining the same program in March, it was the second time the Taipei Detention House had faced such denunciation in less than half a year.

  "The detention home has been consistently passing the buck in both cases," remarked Hsueh Chin-feng (薛欽峰), You's attorney and member of the executive committee of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights (台權會).

  Despite the detention house's protestations of innocence, there appear to have been legal infringements in Liao's case. "The detention house was only authorized to run anti-drug programs prior to May 20 this year, before medical units were established with proper programs," Hsueh pointed out, referring to the provisions of the Narcotics Endangerment Prevention Act enacted last year.

  "The severity of the law, in this case, clearly demonstrates that the authorities still regard those addicted to drugs as criminals rather than people in need of help," Hsueh indicated.

  No sooner than two weeks after Liao enrolled in the program on July 1, his wife Huang Yue-huei (黃月惠) was informed of his critical condition by the detention home.

  She was asked to rush to the Far Eastern Memorial Hospital (亞東紀念醫院) in PanchiaLiaoo, Taipei County.

  Liao's relatives questioned why the detention home was able to transfer Liao to Pao-jen General (博仁綜合醫院) in Taipei, only four hours after they realized there were no vacancies at the Far Eastern.

  In response to Liao's family, Fang Tse-jie (方子傑), director of the Taipei Detention House, read aloud a list of names of hospitals, claiming that they had fulfilled their duty to ensure that the Far Eastern contacted many other hospitals. He explained most of the time spent before the hospital transfer was spent in the conduct of essential clinical examination.

  In the course of the press conference, Liao's family broke into strong protest when Feng, having received a phone call on the spot, suddenly announced that the prosecutors' office in Taipei had unexpectedly decided to carry out the post-mortem examination immediately.

  It is not unusual in Taiwan for relatives of victims of suspicious deaths to attend post-mortem examinations.

  Lai's family reacted immediately, angrily voicing their fears that the detention home had in some way engineered events so that the post mortem took place at a time when the family was known to be engaged at the press conference.

  They protested that their rights were being trampled upon.

  As of yesterday, however, the post-mortem examination had not been carried out and the death certificate had not been issued .

  Liao's wife condemned the detention home for promising on the day of Liao's death to handle these, while she had been told by the hospital that the detention house had informed it that the family would take care of any necessary arrangements.

  Feng argued that the delay was simply because the detention house mistakenly regarded the prosecutors' office in Panchiao district as the one in charge of Liao's case, while, in fact that for Taipei district was responsible as the death had occurred in the second hospital, in Taipei city, not Taipei county.

  "Inevitable administrative process also slowed us down," he said.

  Hsueh, however, regarded Feng's explanation as nothing more than an excuse. "It's inconceivable that it should take a full week to have the process settled," he said.

  He indicated that once the hospital informed the local prosecutors' office of the death, finding out the right person to handle it would be fairly easy.

  In addition, Hsueh voiced suspicions of what he called the "tacit consent" of the Far Eastern Memorial Hospital with the Taipei Detention House, since both cases were either first accepted by or speedily transferred to it. "Why did they always send them to the Far Eastern? Its medical report on You, my client, was so poor that it's hard to prove the responsibility of the detention house," he said.

  On the other hand, Liao's wife claimed that Liao never had any record of high blood pressure, the most common cause of brain hemorrhage. "The first stamp on my husband's health insurance card is the one that claimed for his death, " Huang emphasized.

  "Unpredictable sudden deaths do occur," Feng said in response and claimed that they would assist the Liao family over the incident "for ethical reasons."

  Cheng Chi-Syh (張啟賜), Deputy Director of the Taipei Detention House, bluntly said that, "The Liao family just wants to make an uproar out of a simple incident. Our process is absolutely flawless in law."

  The Taipei Detention House also denied they were responsible for the tragedy of You, the Atayal woman.

  Hsueh, who handled the other similar case, said that to his understanding the problem of the detention house was that they never offered thorough and immediate health checkups for participants in their programs whose health was vulnerable because they had abused drugs.

  "Moreover, the shoddy environment designed to detain criminals is definitely inadequate to the needs of healthcare," he added. "They even failed to offer anything more than tranquilizers to my client who actually suffered from meningitis, misdiagnosing her incontinence as the side-effect of drugs," Hsueh said.

  The other point of contention was that the Taipei Detention House, prior to Liao's death, had hurriedly asked Huang, Liao's wife to sign a release permission for him in the hospital.

  Huang refused to do so, believing the home intended to evade legal responsibility by avoiding having her husband die whilst in its care.

  Huang lashed out at the detention home for going as far as taking a fingerprint from Liao, when he was completely unconscious. "We just wanted to confirm Liao's identification. Having reviewed the incident, we apologize as we found it in fact to have been unnecessary," Feng responded.

  Hsueh, who observed that very similar allegations had been made in You's case, said that, whatever the circumstances, taking the fingerprint of an unconscious person for use on a legal document was indeed legally questionable

  Hsueh questioned, moreover, how the Taipei Detention House had been able to issue the release permission so "efficiently," one day after Liao passed out because of the stroke. "The permission is supposed to confirm the end of drug addiction only after many careful evaluations. But, interestingly, Yo, was found to have amphetamine in her body while her release permission had been issued two days after she became unconscious," Hsueh said, adding, "Whether this is all about forgery should be investigated."
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