Mackay Memorial Hospital is preparing to send a second team of volunteer medical professionals on a humanitarian mission to Ukraine in September, where they would offer medical consultations in rural areas.
Tsai Wei-de (蔡維德), director of the hospital’s International Medical Service Center, who led the first team to Ukraine in April, on Saturday said that, during their visit, the second team would sign a memorandum of understanding with St Martin’s Hospital in Mukachevo, a city in western Ukraine.
The seven-member team would offer free consultations at mobile healthcare units in rural areas from Sept. 11 to 19, Tsai said in a telephone interview.
Photo courtesy of MacKay Memorial Hospital
The specific locations would only be disclosed by his Ukrainian counterpart four weeks before the team’s departure, due to the unpredictability of the war zone, he said.
The Taiwan Christian Medical Association (TCMA), in collaboration with Mackay, had just applied for funding from the government to establish a specialized burn treatment center in Ukraine, TCMA physician Chern Herng-der (陳恆德), who also participated in the hospital’s first mission to Ukraine, said on Saturday.
Burns are particularly common during war, Chern said at a TCMA gathering in Taipei.
Reflecting on his experience in Ukraine, Tsai Hsun-tien (蔡循典), an otolaryngologist at Mackay, said that the sound of air sirens during the first mission made him question his own determination and preparedness if a war were to break out in Taiwan.
He said he contemplated what he would bring if he had only three minutes to pack, and what kind of emergency services he could provide in a military conflict.
Tsai Hsun-tien shared his thoughts on what he would say to his loved ones and the encouraging words he would share with his son in such extreme circumstances.
Encouraging young doctors to participate in overseas humanitarian missions, he said that the dignity and aspirations demonstrated by Ukrainians during wartime have been a great inspiration to him.
“It reminded me of why I wanted to become a doctor in the first place,” Tsai Hsun-tien said.
Mackay’s first volunteer team was the first medical support group from Taiwan to provide assistance in Ukraine after the war broke out in February last year.
During the April missions in Mukachevo and Lviv, the Mackay team offered free consultations at mobile healthcare units, assisted local physicians in performing surgical operations at hospitals, conducted educational activities and offered psychological support to severely traumatized people, the hospital said.
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) today condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the Czech officials confirmed that Chinese agents had surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March last year. Czech Military Intelligence director Petr Bartovsky yesterday said that Chinese operatives had attempted to create the conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, going as far as to plan a collision with her car. Hsiao was vice president-elect at the time. The MAC said that it has requested an explanation and demanded a public apology from Beijing. The CCP has repeatedly ignored the desires
The Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant’s license has expired and it cannot simply be restarted, the Executive Yuan said today, ahead of national debates on the nuclear power referendum. The No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County was disconnected from the nation’s power grid and completely shut down on May 17, the day its license expired. The government would prioritize people’s safety and conduct necessary evaluations and checks if there is a need to extend the service life of the reactor, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference. Lee said that the referendum would read: “Do
RSS