The first Taiwanese doctor to join Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said yesterday that he was inspired to join the international medical and humanitarian aid organization after visiting an MSF photo exhibition when he was still a medical student.
Sung Jui-hsiang (宋睿祥), a surgeon at Keelung Chang Kung Memorial Hospital, shared his experience working for the organization at a “Forgotten Wars” news conference sponsored by the hospital.
He said when he was in his fourth year in Taipei Medical University, he visited an MSF photo exhibition and was transfixed by the picture of a tiny, emaciated Afghan child with desperate eyes that stayed with him for a “long, long time.”
“I wanted to be a different doctor,” Sung decided then, saying the picture had changed him and opened up his horizons.
During his time as an intern, he applied to join the organization through its Hong Kong office and went to Liberia to perform his first tour of humanitarian service the following year.
The 34-year-old doctor said his decision then was met with opposition from his family.
He was grateful for his father’s support, but his girlfriend left him.
Last August, Sung went to Yemen to perform surgery amid the country’s civil war.
The hospital was set up in the middle of a combat area, Sung said. At night, artillery fire would flash through the sky, similar to firecrackers lighting the sky on Lunar New Year.
“It would be a lie if I said I was not afraid,” he said.
He spent three months in Yemen and performed more than 1,000 surgeries. Faced with the dead and injured every day, he realized how vulnerable people are.
Living is something to be cherished, he said, and “happiness is not something to be taken for granted.”
Sung said people who pursue medicine should have love and passion, and he urged more local doctors to join the organization and spread more love from Taiwan.
Actress Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛) has “returned home” to Taiwan, and there are no plans to hold a funeral for the TV star who died in Japan from influenza- induced pneumonia, her family said in a statement Wednesday night. The statement was released after local media outlets reported that Barbie Hsu’s ashes were brought back Taiwan on board a private jet, which arrived at Taipei Songshan Airport around 3 p.m. on Wednesday. To the reporters waiting at the airport, the statement issued by the family read “(we) appreciate friends working in the media for waiting in the cold weather.” “She has safely returned home.
A Vietnamese migrant worker on Thursday won the NT$12 million (US$383,590) jackpot on a scratch-off lottery ticket she bought from a lottery shop in Changhua County’s Puyan Township (埔鹽), Taiwan Lottery Co said yesterday. The lottery winner, who is in her 30s and married, said she would continue to work in Taiwan and send her winnings to her family in Vietnam to improve their life. More Taiwanese and migrant workers have flocked to the lottery shop on Sec 2 of Jhangshuei Road (彰水路) to share in the luck. The shop owner, surnamed Chen (陳), said that his shop has been open for just
Global bodies should stop excluding Taiwan for political reasons, President William Lai (賴清德) told Pope Francis in a letter, adding that he agrees war has no winners. The Vatican is one of only 12 countries to retain formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, and Taipei has watched with concern efforts by Beijing and the Holy See to improve ties. In October, the Vatican and China extended an accord on the appointment of Catholic bishops in China for four years, pointing to a new level of trust between the two parties. Lai, writing to the pope in response to the pontiff’s message on Jan. 1’s
MUST REMAIN FREE: A Chinese takeover of Taiwan would lead to a global conflict, and if the nation blows up, the world’s factories would fall in a week, a minister said Taiwan is like Prague in 1938 facing Adolf Hitler; only if Taiwan remains free and democratic would the world be safe, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) said in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. The ministry on Saturday said Corriere della Sera is one of Italy’s oldest and most read newspapers, frequently covers European economic and political issues, and that Wu agreed to an interview with the paper’s senior political analyst Massimo Franco in Taipei on Jan. 3. The interview was published on Jan. 26 with the title “Taiwan like Prague in 1938 with Hitler,” the ministry