Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation

The Tzu Chi Taipei Hospital is nine years old! Its team of skilled professionals have continued to make progress in medical technology: they have practiced with deep sincerity humanism in their medicine: they taken care of local communities and worked hard to protect the health of the whole society. Dr. Chao You-Chen, superintendent of the hospital, said: “I wish to thank everyone involved in the hospital and all the volunteers for supporting and accompanying us. They have allowed us to develop a medicine that is both specialized and humanist. The most important is that we keep improving and make steady progress, step by step, and march toward achieving our ideal.”

The anniversary ceremony included presentation on the hospital’s research and introduction of the outstanding people who have worked there for a long time. In addition to reporting their clinical work, each medical department announced the results of its best research published in the previous year, research which was widely acknowledged by the medical community.

Huang Jun-ren is director of the hospital’s teaching department: “everyone in the hospital worked very hard. In addition, it is very important to say that only with the support of each department can we have this kind of result. In 2014, we hope we can move up to the next level, building on the basis of what we have done in the past.”

The hospital superintendent himself presented the bamboo bank, to remind everyone of the original mission of medicine – to care for those who are suffering and help those in difficulty.

If we go back nine years to the hospital’s foundation, its mission was to save human life, protect health and end the suffering of the patients. This was expressed in a presentation by the doctors of the hospital’s department of orthopedics department on ‘technology for the transplant of tendons from a different body’. This saved the life of a patient who was close to having to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

Wang Zhen-lin, one of the doctors in the department, said: “We performed the graft of the skin and the muscle. Because there was no tendon, the leg could not function properly and the patient easily fell. Many loving bodhisattvas who are organ-donors provided their tendon for grafting. So we did an operation using microscopic surgery; this enabled the patient to regain the use of his leg.”

Now the patient, Mr Chen, is already able to walk on his own. The doctor said: “the success rate of this operation is more than 95 per cent and allows the patients to regain over 90 per cent of the use of his leg. We have greatly improved the success rate of this operation that was previously low and included a risk of secondary illness.”

To celebrate the ninth anniversary, the Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital has from this year started to participate in activities in the local community. On May 3, more than 100 staff and volunteers from the hospital, led by director Zhao You-cheng, took five different routes and opened up drains next to the street that were very hard to clean; they collected the waste inside them.

Director Zhao said: “We removed the iron covers of the drains and removed the cigarette butts that were piled up inside. As we did so, the people on the street cheered us on. I feel that Taiwan has so many loving people. I wish everyone to be happy. Today is a special day for celebration.”

To do such a cleaning activity outside the hospital was not only an opportunity for physical exercise but a way to become closer to the neighbors and repay society; it was also a chance to work to improve the environment. Shen Yi-qing, direction of the hospital’s dental department, said: “If we always have this kind of activity, we are helping to protect the environment. If we eat vegetarian food, this helps not only each person but our family, our country and the whole world.”

The Tzu Chi Taipei Hospital used this non-medical way to celebrate its ninth anniversary and show the humanism of the foundation’s medical mission.