Advocacy groups for HIV/AIDS patients’ rights urged adherence to standard operating procedures for organ transplants yesterday after a recent case in which organs from an HIV-positive donor were given to five transplant recipients.
Members of the Taiwan Lourdes Association said the privacy of those affected by HIV/AIDS should be protected lest the public further stigmatize victims and that the incident had occurred because National Taiwan University Hospital did not rigorously follow standard procedures of checking test results before transplanting organs.
“The medical negligence is a fact,” the association said.
Some from the medical establishment questioned how a donor being monitored by the government could become a donor and said stipulations protecting the privacy of HIV/AIDS patients have hurt the rights of potential organ recipients.
The mother of the donor said she was unaware that her son had HIV, or she would never have agreed to allow him to be a donor.
Asked if HIV/AIDs patients should be flagged to prevent such incidents, the association said that “putting the responsibility of infection on the patients will not solve the root of the problem.”
The association and the People With HIV/AIDS Rights Advocacy Association of Taiwan said they had conducted an investigation and found between 10 percent and 40 percent of people with HIV/AIDS were denied surgical or dental treatment once their condition became known.
In addition, nearly 50 percent of carriers were reluctant to reveal their status to their families, the two groups said, mainly because they were worried about not being accepted or being ostracized.
The Taiwan Lourdes Association said the organ transplant incident shows that stereotypes surrounding HIV/AIDS still exist and that the recipients and their families now live in fear and anxiety, and will need trauma counseling and psychological treatment.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods