A military hospital in Pingtung City has been accused of leaving a surgical scalpel blade inside the chest cavity of a 72-year-old woman, which resulted in her death.
“We demand that the judiciary conduct an investigation. The family has asked for answers from the military hospital,” Pingtung County Councilor Hsu Chan-wei (許展維) said on Monday, accusing doctors and staff at the Pingtung Branch of Kaohsiung Armed Forces General Hospital of gross negligence and misconduct.
A granddaughter of the 72-year-old, a high-school student surnamed Huang (黃), said her grandmother had serious coughing and discomfort on the evening of July 1, and she called for an ambulance.
After taking a blood sample and taking an X-ray image, hospital medics said that she had pleural effusion, a buildup of excess fluid between the layers of the pleura outside the lungs.
However, the woman had to wait a few days for treatment, since it was a Friday and the hospital could not perform the operation at the weekend due to a shortage of staff, Huang said.
“My grandmother was there until Tuesday, when doctors decided it was necessary to operate, but later that afternoon, hospital staff told us a blade from a surgical scalpel had snapped off and they could not get it out,” Huang said. “Then they said she needed to be transferred to the main military hospital in Kaohsiung for the procedure.”
“The staff told us that a bed for my grandmother had been arranged at the Kaohsiung hospital. So my family had to transport her that evening, from Pingtung to Kaohsiung, and we paid NT$3,500 for the ambulance, but there was no bed when we got there and so we had to wait. My grandmother was in pain all this time,” she said.
Huang said they waited for two days, until the morning of Thursday last week, for the operation to remove the blade.
“In next two days, July 8 and 9, we could still talk to her via videoconference ... but the next day [Sunday] a medic called us to say that her condition had deteriorated, and not long after they said that she died,” Huang said. “We could not believe what had happened.”
The Pingtung District Prosecutors’ Office said it had asked the coroner to perform a postmortem and that, based on the findings, it could initiate legal proceedings.
Additional reporting by Jason Pan
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
Ferry operators are planning to provide a total of 1,429 journeys between Taiwan proper and its offshore islands to meet increased travel demand during the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday, the Maritime and Port Bureau said yesterday. The available number of ferry journeys on eight routes from Saturday next week to Feb. 2 is expected to meet a maximum transport capacity of 289,414 passengers, the bureau said in a news release. Meanwhile, a total of 396 journeys on the "small three links," which are direct ferries connecting Taiwan's Kinmen and Lienchiang counties with China's Fujian Province, are also being planned to accommodate
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) yesterday authorized the execution of convicted murderer Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), the first death row prisoner to be put to death since President William Lai (賴清德) took office. Huang was to be executed via a firing squad yesterday evening, which would leave Taiwan with 36 convicts on death row. Huang on Oct. 1, 2013, broke into his ex-girlfriend Wang Ping-chih’s (王品智) residence in New Taipei City, where he raped and murdered Wang. He also killed Wang’s mother. Huang was bitter over the breakup and her accusation that he had stolen NT$200,000 (US$6,074) from her bank account, prosecutors said
RSS