Former Department of Health minister Lin Fang-yue (林芳郁) yesterday officially took over as the new superintendent of Taipei Veterans General Hospital (TVGH), despite opposition from some of the staff at the hospital.
At the inauguration ceremony, Lin said he felt like “a bride marrying into her husband’s family,” and that he was willing to make adjustments to become part of the TVGH family.
“I am proud to be appointed superintendent of TVGH, the leading hospital in Taiwan,” Lin said. “From this moment on … I will work hard with everyone to achieve the hospital’s goals and lead it to becoming an internationally recognized, first-class hospital.”
As superintendent, Lin said he hoped to develop medical care for the elderly, improve the hospital’s cooperation with other hospitals and medical research centers, as well as focus medical research on the biomedical field.
Lin was accompanied by his wife Lin Ching-yun(林靜芸), celebrity cosmetic surgeon and founder of Jean’s Clinic of Plastic Surgery.
Most of the TVGH department heads attended Lin’s inauguration ceremony, which was overseen by Kao Hua-chu (高華柱), director of the Executive Yuan’s Veterans Affairs Commission.
Lin said he hoped his entering the TVGH system would be a first step toward breaking down the walls that separate different hospital systems in Taiwan.
He said he would thoroughly become a “TVGH person,” a term many use to describe hospital personnel that work within the TVGH system, as opposed to a “National Taiwan University [NTU] person,” which describes someone who works in or graduated from NTU or National Taiwan University Hospital.
As the first superintendent of TVGH who was not promoted from within the system in the hospital’s 50-year history, Lin’s appointment has been met with opposition from both outside and within the hospital.
Earlier this month, former TVGH superintendent Lo Kwang-juei (羅光瑞), as well as several other retired and current hospital staff and department heads, held a press conference to openly criticize the appointment as politically motivated.
Last week, a local newspaper ran an advertisement on its front page that said government officials were “shaming the medical field” with Lin’s appointment.
Despite reports that some TVGH staff planned to oust him within a few months, Lin said he hoped he would serve in this position “for a while.”
Lin’s previous post as health minister ended after four months.
At the start of the melamine scandal in September, Lin resigned as health minister to take responsibility for the department’s handling of the controversy over tainted food imports from China.
His resignation made him the Cabinet member with the shortest term of service since Liu Chao-hsiuan (劉兆玄) became the premier.
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) today condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the Czech officials confirmed that Chinese agents had surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March last year. Czech Military Intelligence director Petr Bartovsky yesterday said that Chinese operatives had attempted to create the conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, going as far as to plan a collision with her car. Hsiao was vice president-elect at the time. The MAC said that it has requested an explanation and demanded a public apology from Beijing. The CCP has repeatedly ignored the desires
The Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant’s license has expired and it cannot simply be restarted, the Executive Yuan said today, ahead of national debates on the nuclear power referendum. The No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County was disconnected from the nation’s power grid and completely shut down on May 17, the day its license expired. The government would prioritize people’s safety and conduct necessary evaluations and checks if there is a need to extend the service life of the reactor, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference. Lee said that the referendum would read: “Do
RSS