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Accidental HIV-Infected Organ Transplants Case: Ko’s Appeal for Re-evaluation Rejected
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 2015/01/05
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Accidental HIV-Infected Organ Transplants Case: Ko’s Appeal for Re-evaluation Rejected
Source: Taipei newspapers January 5, 2014
The Public Functionaries Disciplinary Sanction Commission (PFDSC, 公務人員懲戒委員會) under the Judicial Yuan rejected Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) appeal for a re-evaluation of the PFDSC’s decision in 2013 to demote Ko, then director of Department of Traumatology at the National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH), for negligence and omission in a 2011 case in which organs from an HIV-positive donor were transplanted into five patients at the hospital.
The PFDSC rejected Ko’s appeal because the commission concluded that Ko was guilty of omission and negligent of his duties as head of the NTTU organ transplant task force.
In 2011, a total of five patients at National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH) and National Cheng Kung University Hospital (NCKUH) were given donated organs that came from an HIV-positive body. In August 2012, the Control Yuan, the nation’s top watchdog body, voted on a motion to impeach Ko for medical malpractice and referred Ko to the PFDSC for disciplinary punishment. In 2013, the PFDSC concluded that Ko was in violation of Article 7 of the Civil Service Work Act (公務員服務法), thereby demoting Ko by two ranks although he had argued in a 42-page defense deposition to the PFDSC that he had done nothing wrong in the accidental HIV-infected organ transplants.
After learning of his demotion while on a trip to Poland, Ko offered apologies through a friend in Taiwan to the patients and their families, but stated that the punishment was unacceptable as he had done nothing wrong.
Ko’s wife Chen Pei-chi (陳佩琪), a pediatrician at Taipei City Hospital’s Heping Fuyou Branch, accused NTUH of treating him as a sacrificial lamb.
The PFDSC indicated in its decision yesterday that Ko failed to personally inspect the blood test reports before the transplants and had non-qualified staff at the hospital authorize blood tests, in addition to failing to do follow-up checks.
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