The Formosa Fun Coast (八仙海岸) fire yesterday claimed its third fatality, while the number of survivors in critical condition declined slightly.
Chen Tien-shun (陳天順), a 20-year-old majoring in civil engineering at Tamkang University, had been treated by the Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital since he sustained second and third-degree burns over 60 percent of his body and inhalation injuries during the fire.
The hospital said Chen had been stable, conscious and able to communicate with his family for the past few days before his condition took a turn for the worse on Saturday morning.
“Our medical team performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on him before attaching him to a extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine,” the hospital said.
However, the medical team said it then found that Chen had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy — a condition characterized by a thickening of the heart muscle — coupled with infiltration of the lungs and a reduced heart rate.
Infiltration of the lungs refers to a medical condition in which material with a density higher than air gathers in lung tissue.
After predicting a minimal chance of recovery for Chen, and in accordance with his family’s wishes, Chen was transferred to his home in New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋), where his breathing tube was removed at about 8am yesterday morning, a relative who used the screen name zelda24 in an online forum said.
The number of victims in critical condition dropped by two to 235 as of 10am yesterday.
A total of 432 people hurt in the fire remain hospitalized at almost 50 medical institutions across the nation, including 291 in intensive care, the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s latest statistics showed.
In related news, Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Lin Tzou-yien (林奏延) said the ministry planned to discuss with the Executive Yuan tomorrow the possibility of allocating a secondary reserve fund to provide incentives for medical personnel working long hours to treat the fire victims.
The manner in which the incentives should be allocated and how to ensure the money actually goes to medical staff would be discussed at the meeting, Lin said, adding that the ministry would also see to it that hospitals paid healthcare workers the overtime pay they deserved.
The ministry said a total of 1,015 medical personnel, including 63 physicians and 889 nurses, have offered to help the hospitals treating survivors.
However, just 11 hospitals have requested additional staff from the ministry so far, amounting to 22 physicians and 121 nurses, it said.
Additional reporting by CNA
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