Although Taiwan offers high-quality, low-cost medical services, this is not as important in tapping the Chinese market for medical tourism as clearing red tape for severely ill patents, a medical executive said on Saturday.
Wu Ming-yen (吳明彥), secretary-general of the Taiwan Non-governmental Hospitals and Clinics Association (NHCA), said that the complicated, time-consuming application process is deterring very ill Chinese from coming to Taiwan to seek medical attention.
Chinese who wish to visit for medical purposes must first obtain a medical certificate from a doctor in China, verifying that they need specialized care.
Then they must secure acceptance from a Taiwan hospital, which in turn is required to apply to Taiwan immigration authorities on behalf of the prospective patient for an entry permit.
In the final step, the patients have to obtain permission from the Chinese authorities to travel to Taiwan.
Wu said the second and third steps could take up to three weeks and if the applicant is lucky, the last step could take a month.
In response to media inquiries, Liu Ming-hsun (劉明勳), the official in charge of the issue at the Department of Health’s Bureau of Medical Affairs, said authorities were working to relax restrictions and streamline the application procedure.
However, Liu said it could still take a long time for severely ill patients to obtain Chinese authorities’ permission to travel to Taiwan.
He urged the Straits Exchange Foundation and the Beijing-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits to address the matter.
In 2007, Taiwan opened its doors to patients from China seeking live donor liver transplants, maxillofacial reconstruction, artificial insemination, joint replacement and cardiovascular treatment.
However, statistics show that only about 30 Chinese patients have so far traveled to Taiwan for this type of medical treatment.
This number falls far short of the government’s objective of “offering medical services to 100,000 people in three years” at the time when the restrictions were lifted, said Lee Wei-chiang (李偉強), director of Taipei Veterans General Hospital’s International Medical Service Center (IMSC).
The information on the IMSC Web site and the way it is presented indicates that it is targeting China as one of its major sources of patients.
The Web site features both English and Chinese, but the information in Chinese is written in simplified characters, the system used in China.
A recently discovered supernova is the brightest and closest to Earth identified in the past decade, and can be observed with basic equipment, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said on Wednesday. The supernova has an absolute magnitude of 14.9 in luminosity and is in the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) about 21 million light-years from Earth. It was discovered early on May 20 by Japanese amateur astronomer Koichi Itagaki, who immediately reported the finding to the International Astronomical Union, the museum said. The supernova was designated SN 2023ixf following the astronomical naming conventions for supernovas, it added. The museum said that it observed
Tropical storm Guchol is moving in a northeasterly direction off the east coast of the Philippines and will not hit Taiwan, but will impact local weather starting on Friday, the Central Weather Bureau said Thursday. The storm would bring a low-pressure system northward toward the vicinity of Taiwan, forecaster Chao Hung (趙竑) said. Northern Taiwan will see intermittent rain showers in the morning, and thunderstorms in the afternoon on Friday, he said, adding that rain would be heavier on the east coast and in the central-southern mountainous areas. Rainfall would continue into Saturday, and would spread throughout Taiwan proper, he
Exiled Chinese democracy advocate Wang Dan (王丹) yesterday denied an accusation by former Taiwanese political worker Lee Yuan-chun (李援軍) that Wang had sexually harassed him in a hotel room in New York nine years ago. There was a huge gap between Lee’s accusation and his own understanding and memory, Wang wrote on Facebook, adding it was hard for him to respond further regarding a “unilateral description” made by someone else. Wang made the remarks after his initial response on Facebook was met with criticism, with people saying he did not directly address the allegation. Lee on Friday wrote on Facebook that he
A man was arrested in Hsinchu on Saturday on suspicion of filming women in the women’s washroom of a shopping mall in the city, local Chinese-language media reported on Thursday. The man was arrested at around noon on Saturday when a woman using a stall in the mall’s washroom noticed a cellphone being held above her from the neighboring stall, reports said. The woman ran out of the washroom and yelled to her husband to help her, after which the suspect – who was dressed as a woman – attempted to flee, but was subdued by other men until police
RSS