Doctor who pushed for hospital in remote Taitung dies at 58

Taitung, Sept. 20 (CNA) Dr. Tjaikung Ruveljeng (徐超斌), who spent 14 years campaigning for the first hospital along Taitung's South-Link Highway, died from cancer on Thursday at the age of 58 before realizing his vision, his family said Friday.

On Friday morning, the doctor's family and fellow Paiwan tribespeople lined the road as an ambulance brought him back to his childhood home in Daren Township in Taitung County.

Nicknamed the "superman doctor," Tjaikung Ruveljeng had been undergoing cancer treatment since 2020 but continued seeing patients at the South-Link Medical Foundation Clinic, which he opened in June 2023, his family wrote on Facebook.

The clinic in Taitung's Dawu Township serves as both a stopgap and the "cornerstone" for a future hospital project that would be spearheaded by the South-Link Medical Foundation, which was founded in 2019, according to the foundation.

Tjaikung Ruveljeng would not live to see the hospital be built. According to the foundation's latest annual report in 2023, the project had yet to be approved by 2023 due to concerns over issues such as workforce shortages.

The South-Link Highway, which starts at Fonggang in Pingtung County on Taiwan's southwestern coast, stretches over 100 kilometers without a hospital across rural Pingtung and Taitung County before reaching Taitung City on the southeastern coast, nearly 60 kilometers north of the planned hospital site.

The doctor told CNA in 2014 that he decided to become a physician at the age of seven after witnessing an ambulance returning halfway after failing to reach a hospital in time for a fellow Paiwan tribesperson.

After earning his medical license, he returned to Daren in 2002 as head of the local public health center, extending clinic hours into nights and holidays for the township's 4,141 residents.

In 2006, Tjaikung Ruveljeng suffered a major stroke that left his left side partially impaired and "highlighted the need for medical facilities firsthand," inspiring him to begin campaigning for a hospital in 2011, the foundation said.

Regarding the future of medical care along the South-Link Highway, the doctor's clinic will continue operating as usual, with staff and the necessary measures already in place before his health declined, said Chang Hsiao-yun (張小雲), head of a local health association.