Want China Times, CNA 2015-07-18
Medical staff members treat a burn victim from the water park disaster at Far
Eastern Memorial Hospital in New Taipei, July 10. (Photo courtesy of Far
Eastern Memorial Hospital)
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A group of
plastic and reconstructive surgeons and therapists from Johns Hopkins Medicine
will arrive in Taipei this weekend to help treat patients who suffered severe
burns last month in a water park disaster, a Ministry of Health and Welfare
official said Friday.
Most of the
six members of the Johns Hopkins team will travel to Taipei from Los Angeles on
the presidential plane with President Ma Ying-jeou, who is en route home from a
state visit to Central America and the Caribbean.
The
president announced the US medical team's week-long visit to Taiwan at a dinner
party hosted by overseas Chinese communities on Thursday in Los Angeles, where
Ma was transiting.
The
American medical experts will visit hospitals in central and southern Taiwan to
mainly offer advice on treating burn patients, according to the president.
Because
many of the patients still require surgical procedures, the American surgeons
may also operate on patients under the supervision of local physicians, the
president added.
Ma said
that the US physicians will not violate Taiwanese law by performing the
operations because they are in Taiwan to provide emergency assistance rather
than to practice medicine as a profession in the country.
Under
Taiwanese law, foreign doctors are normally required to have a Taiwanese
medical license to practice medicine here.
Hsu
Ming-hui, director of the Health Ministry's Office of International
Cooperation, said the six-member group will include Stephen Maxwell Milner,
director of the Johns Hopkins Burn Center, and Christina L. Catlett, an
attending physician in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Johns Hopkins
Hospital.
It will
also include Kevin Gerold, associate professor of anesthesiology and critical
care medicine; Denver Lough, plastic and reconstructive surgery resident at
Johns Hopkins Hospital; Linda Ware, clinical social work/therapist and
therapist Theresa A. Lynch.
The victims
they will treat were among the nearly 500 people who were injured when colored
powder ignited at a concert at Formosa Fun Coast water park in New Taipei on
June 27.
As of
Thursday, 382 of the burn victims remained hospitalized, and 250 were in
intensive care units, with 185 of them in critical condition, according to the
ministry.
A patient with severed burns at a hospital in New Taipei, July 3.
(Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Health and Welfare)
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