Shih Chun-jen, mentor of neurosurgeons, dies at 93

Taipei, June 18 (CNA) Shih Chun-jen (施純仁), a mentor of a generation of Taiwan's neurosurgeons and former head of the National Health Administration (NHA), died of a heart attack at Taipei Veterans General Hospital on Sunday at the age of 93.

Shih, a native of Taichung who was born in 1923, received his early education during the Japanese colonial period (1895-1945) and graduated from National Taiwan University in 1947, majoring in medicine.

He then joined the National Defense Medical Center, where he worked for 38 years.

Shih did a two-year residency at the Montreal Neurological Institute in Canada from 1956-1958, and then helped develop the field of neurosurgery in Taiwan after returning in 1958 and co-founded the Taiwan Neurological Society in 1977.

Shih served as the head of the general surgery department at Tri-Service General Hospital -- the teaching hospital of the National Defense Medical Center -- from 1975 to 1984 and headed the NHA (which became the Ministry of Health and Welfare in 2013) from 1986 to 1990.

Shih facilitated the revision of the Physicians Act and helped push through the Medical Care Act and the Human Organ Transplant Ordinance during his four-year term as head of the NHA. Shih's memoir was published in Taipei in 2009.