While most people were getting ready to celebrate the Lunar New Year this week, Chen Tzu-fei (陳姿妃), a lecturer at the Tzu Chi College of Technology's Department of Nursing, was packing medical supplies and getting ready to return to Somaliland, a little-known and unrecognized state that declared its independence from war-ravaged Somalia in 1991.
Chen, 38, holds a masters in nursing from Adelaide University in Australia and has worked as a volunteer in the Taiwan Root Medical Peace Corps' international aid program for the last five years.
Taiwan Root is an NGO that sends Taiwanese medical professionals to aboriginal communities domestically and to 15 countries around the world to provide health care to those in need.
But before Chen left for Somaliland, she faced another challenge -- her own failing health. Diagnosed with autoimmune disease in the middle of last year, she was forced to take a six month unpaid leave of absence from Tzu Chi to try to recover. But when Taiwan Root asked her to go to Somaliland, she couldn't turn down the opportunity to help build a modern system of nursing in the impoverished, unrecognized state.
On her first trip to Somaliland, Chen had to fly for two days, with stops in Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi and Ethiopia before finally reaching the capital Hargeisa. Chen said she originally planned to rebuild Somaliland's nursing education system from the bottom up, but while she was still evaluating the system, political instability forced the officials who had asked Taiwan Root for help to resign en masse.
Chen decided to stay on anyway.
"Root Taiwan promised the people of Somaliland, not the government that it would provide medical aid," she said.
Chen said she discovered that nursing care in Somaliland's hospitals was facing crippling short-term needs. She decided to begin by helping Hargeisa Group Hospital set up a nursing staff trained in the basics of modern hospital management.
Starting almost completely from scratch, she set up a filing system for patient records, she said.
She and the nursing staff had to build the filing cabinets themselves by hand. Other basic management practices she put in place included numbering patient beds, scheduling nursing rounds and tracking hospital equipment inventory, she said.
Chen also found time to teach at a local nursing school. Students took what they learned in her class straight back to the hospital.
After six months of intensive work, Chen's health was beginning to deteriorate and the political situation was becoming unstable.
She returned to Taiwan early last year to rest for a few weeks, but said she soon decided that she had to go back to finish the work she had begun.
After extending her leave of absence from the Tzu Chi College of Technology, Chen returned to Somaliland without any outside funding or support to continue her work.
Chen will not be home on the Lunar New Year this year, but said she had discovered a new way to celebrate the spirit of the holiday by helping others on the distant Horn of Africa.
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