In 2020 when border restrictions were imposed worldwide due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Taipei Veterans General Hospital (TVGH, 臺北榮民總醫院) received an overseas medical request for a nine-month-old Vietnamese baby girl with biliary atresia who was admitted to National Hospital of Pediatrics (NHP) in Hanoi and needed urgent liver transplantation.
The baby’s mother, a news anchor of Vietnam Television (VTV), initially contacted Dr. Liu Chin-Su (劉君恕), director of TVGH’s Department of Pediatric Surgery. With the support of Ministry of Health and Welfare and Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Vietnam, the baby finally came to Taiwan to receive a liver transplant at TVGH in July, and recovered well after the operation. This marked the third successful pediatric liver transplant for Vietnamese children in 2020 by TVGH’s surgery team.
With the assistance of TVGH, this story is also the theme of Never Give Up, a multilingual film made by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) to promote Taiwan’s participation in the World Health Assembly (WHA).