Tue, Oct 12, 2010 page2

• FEATURE: Nurses risk lives to care for Wutai

  COMMITMENT: Three senior nurses talk of their experience battling natural disasters, power outages and broken bridges to care for their fellow Aborigines

  • By Hou Chien-chuan / Staff Reporter
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  Three senior nurses at the Wutai (霧台) health clinic in Pingtung County have been there for up to three decades, caring for the young, the elderly and the ailing in the mountainous areas. They have delivered babies and provided emergency aid, all to help protect the lives of their fellow Aborigines.

  Head nurse Ba Hsiu-mei (巴秀美), a grandmother, recently celebrated her 30th year of service at the clinic. She says serving in mountainous areas meant having to give one’s all at all times. She remembers how, in the early years, she would ride a bicycle from household to household to care for people suffering from chronic diseases and sometimes help deliver babies — day or night, even in adjoining villages.

  Chao Chiu-hsiang (趙秋香) has also been at the clinic for 30 years. She recently returned by helicopter after being isolated in the mountains for six days because of Typhoon Fanapi, which hit the country on Sept. 19.

  

  Photo: Lo Hsin-chen, Taipei Times

  Electricity was down and food went bad, but her experience with previous natural disasters taught her to send down seriously ill patients immediately and to bring sufficient medication to help those who had to stay behind.

  She remembers one time when, alone at the clinic and roads leading up to it were cut off during a typhoon, a woman suffered a convulsive seizure. There was no electricity and the treatment according to doctors’ instructions was ineffective. As the patient’s condition deteriorated, the water in the river receded slightly and a group of men helped carry the patient to the bridgehead and over to the other side of the river so the ambulance waiting there could transport her down the mountain in time to save her life.

  Chen Mei-hua (陳美花), who has worked in Wutai for 28 years, said that in the early days, they had to travel up the mountain in a wooden cart on an uneven and uncomfortable pebble road. Even today, she said, the road is frequently destroyed, which forces them to travel by helicopter. On many occasions, when there is neither electricity nor water, they had to live on rice and canned food.

  The weather over the past 10 years has been highly unstable, Chen said, and although roads are often destroyed, she must go where there are residents. Even if there is only one person left in a tribe, she still has to go.

  Sometimes roads are blocked and she has to walk for a long time before reaching a village. She also has to see to it that patients are transported down from the mountains for treatment. All the close calls, such as avoiding falling rocks, are part of the dangers she faces on a daily basis.

  Despite all these hardships, the three nurses have no intention of calling it quits.

  Ba said the tribespeople sharing her language and traditions are like family to her and that the elderly people in mountain areas would tell her things they wouldn’t even tell their children.

  Ba said they often create a family-like atmosphere by offering her the very best things they have.

  Chao says she is always moved whenever villagers help her carry her heavy medical bag. Everyone in the mountains is her friend and she would stay with the tribe despite several close brush with death when natural disasters struck.

  Wutai Township becomes isolated whenever a typhoon hits the area. The nurses often have to set out in the dead of night when both electricity and water are out and make their way through the dark. Despite this, they always go back up by helicopter because the young, the old and the weak in the tribal areas rely on them.

  During Typhoon Fanapi, the road to Wutai was cut off and the electricity went out for the whole township after Yila Bridge (伊拉便橋) was washed away by turbulent floodwaters. Helicopters began transporting on Sept. 21 much-needed resources into the nearby mountain areas, while at the same time bringing down the nurses who had been stranded in the area for six days.

  Two doctors, 12 nurses, one worker and one driver work at the clinic. They work in teams, four at a time, and they are all used to being isolated for up to a week when communications are cut off. This happens so often that they have found ways of dealing with the situation to keep operations running.

  They’ve all faced the threat of falling rocks and once, the road gave way almost at the very moment their car passed through. These and similar experiences are frequent and every single one leaves them in a cold sweat.

  One of the nurses feels that going to work is like entering a race with the god of death, saying that if you’re not running to get through before a rock falls, you’re running to get away from the rocks that are already falling. Once, she said, the clinic car was hit by a rock, scaring everyone inside. She said she applies for a transfer every year, but because no one new is willing to transfer to the area, she stays on, year after year. She has now been there for 10 years.

  Thinking of a narrow escape from one particular typhoon, Lee Yu-hsiang (李玉香), who has been at the clinic for nine years, said the road was so bad she had to abandon her car and walk through mud and down the mountain, clutching a rope. After walking for a day, she finally made it to safety late into the night. The darkness was only broken momentarily by lightning.

  “I wondered if anyone would have ever found out if I had died on that mountain,” said Lee, who felt she had managed to escape the clutches of death.

  One of the nurses said the last few years have seen an uninterrupted string of disastrous typhoons, but as long as they are needed in the tribal areas, they would remain at their posts.

  Saying they are provided no extra accident insurance or risk subsidies, the nurse expressed the hope that her superiors would offer some more guarantees for medical staff willing to work on the frontlines.
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