Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/06/30
By: Chen Ching-fang and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, June 30 (CNA) With huge demand for skin dressings for the nearly 500 people injured in a fire and explosion at a water park in New Taipei late Saturday, Taiwan’s organ center called Tuesday for urgent donations of cadaver skin.

There are just 115 rolls left in Taiwan’s cadaver skin stocks, with each roll measuring 10 x 20 centimeters, Taiwan Organ Registry and Sharing Center Chairman Lee Po-chang (李伯璋) told the media.

“The supply is not sufficient,” even if all the skin stocks are used on the explosion victims, Lee said.

Families in Taiwan tend to be less amenable to donating skin from their departed loved ones compared with other organ donations, as removing the skin leads to an unsightly corpse, according to Lee Jing-wei (李經維), head of the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery of National Cheng Kung University Hospital in Tainan.