Traffic in the Hsuehshan Tunnel was restricted on Sunday to allow a donated heart from Yilan County to be rushed to a hospital in Taipei, the first time a lane in the tunnel had been closed for an ambulance since its inauguration in 2006.
The route from Yilan’s Yangming Hospital to the Taipei Veterans General Hospital is about 65km and includes three national freeways — freeway Nos. 5, 1 and 3.
Local newspapers reported yesterday that to get the heart to Taipei in time through the usually heavy northbound traffic on Sunday, when the speeds in the Hsuehshan Tunnel, a section of Freeway No. 5, can be as slow as 10kph, police had to cordon off the outer line of northbound traffic, the first time this had been done, to allow passage of an ambulance.
“Organ donation is more important than the average emergency,” Chiu Chung-yuan of the National Highway Police Bureau said.
The ambulance took only seven minutes to get through the 12.9km tunnel, Chiu said. The ambulance left the Yilan hospital at 10:58pm on Sunday, traveling at very high speeds with a police escort, and arrived at Taipei Veterans General Hospital at 11:37pm.
The transplant operation on a woman in her 50s began at midnight and went smoothly, according to hospital officials.
The donor, surnamed Chen, a man in his early 40s, had been pronounced brain dead earlier in the day and his family decided to donate his heart, liver, pancreas, kidneys, corneas and bone marrow, which could benefit at least seven people.
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