The Taipei City Government Special Case Investigation Team declared yesterday that Taipei Municipal Hoping Hospital -- though indeed not vigilant enough -- did not try to cover up the in-hospital SARS outbreak nor did it intentionally delay reporting its cases of the disease.
However, the investigation team did say that the city's Bureau of Health had been negligent in its supervision.
"The ability to detect a probable SARS case was affected by the frequently changing definitions of the epidemic from the World Health Organization (WHO), plus there were often difficulties in clinical diagnosis of the symptoms. Hence the experts did not think Hoping meant to conceal the outbreak within the hospital or put off reporting the cases," said Deputy Mayor Pai Hsiou-hsiung (白秀雄), who was in charge of assembling the team made up of five external experts.
"But since this disease could bring serious consequences, even if the doctor or the hospital could not judge a patient to be a suspected case, for the sake of safety the hospital should still have remained vigilant. After probing how the hospital dealt with the patients, the team found them to be insufficiently alert," Pai added.
The investigation team offered an official report on the Hoping in-hospital SARS infection yesterday. The report further indicated that Hoping should be faulted for not taking necessary protective measures before it was sealed off.
Concerning the health bureau's responsibility as the authority in charge of the municipal hospitals, the investigation team pointed out that the bureau did not conduct proper supervision of the hospital's preparations for SARS.
In addition, the team said that the health bureau did not demand strongly enough that the hospitals heighten their level of alertness, resulting in the inability of the bureau to respond to the epidemic in a timely manner, the team said.
The investigators suggested that the cases of former Hoping Hospital superintendent Wu Kang-wen (
The investigators, however, could not reach an agreement on former bureau director Chiu Shu-ti (
In the end, the investigation team decided to send the report to the Control Yuan for reference, since the Control Yuan was already investigating Chiu.
As to how to review the responsibility of the health bureau officials and civil servants, the team suggested that the bureau should handle the matter itself and then report to the city government.
Yesterday, Taipei did not report any new SARS cases for the first time since the outbreak began in late April.
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