Evitable Human Error That Leads To Transplants from AIDS donor

This is probably one of the worst thing that could ever happen to a person, both from the recipients' and the donor's perspective. 


The striking incident arose from one of the most prestigious medical school in Taiwan: National Taiwan University Hospital. Due to bad communication between the examinator and the coordinator in NTUH, the surgeons from both NTUH and National Cheng Kong University Hospital accidently transplanted a few organs of a donor who was infected by AIDS into some  patients. Additionally, a few dozens of medical personnel were exposed to large volume of body fluid of the donor without proper protection. Currently, almost all the related personnel are undergoing preventive treatment in the hope to reduce the possibility of being infected. However, the chances of miracle for the recipients now seems rather low because of the tremendous number of AIDS viruses exchanged in the process of and after the transplants.



Such shocking medical error dramatically defiled the reputation of NTUH. It clearly revealed the fact that some doctors and medical personnel in the current system are actually unqualified, mainly because some of the routines and protocols that should definitely be followed were not properly abided by the people involved, which indirectly indicates that some part of the current medical system are seriously flawed, and no one is willing to revise it until such a tragedy happened.


The donor's family is not in a better situation either. According to the donor's mother, she was aware that her son was a homosexual, but she had no idea that he was infected with AIDS. They donated his organs in the hope to save other people's lives, but were sadly informed that their goodwill ended up causing more tragedies.

IMO, both the management and surgeons of NTU should be blamed because they didn't grant enough respect to both the donor and recipients. What we really need is a revolutionary reevaluation of the current medical school admission system, which currently only accepts those with highest test scores rather than those with the eagerness to save other people. I believed that to increase the percentage of so-called "good" doctors, the restriction on admission should be slackened as much as possible, but the requirements for graduation must be far more taut than current standards, so that every student with a passion to save the patients can be admitted, but only those qualified can graduate. This policy will not only change the blindly pursuit of medical schools that many Taiwanese possessed, but also increase the amount of "true" doctors.