Taipei Times
Date: Jun 26, 2020
By Jake Chung / Staff writer, with CNA
Academia Sinica’s Chen Ding-shinn (陳定信), the nation’s leading authority on hepatitis, died
Academia Sinica’s Chen Ding-shinn holds a bouquet of flowers at a book launch in an undated photograph.
Photo: Yang Yuan-ting, Taipei Times
Born on July 6, 1943, in then-Taipei County’s Yingge Township (鶯歌), Chen was a student of National Taiwan University College of Medicine professor Sung Juei-low (宋瑞樓), dubbed the Taiwanese father of liver disease research.
Chen attributed his dedication to the study of liver diseases to his father dying of liver cancer when he was in his senior year in college and to his contracting hepatitis A when he was in elementary school.
He was in the original group that persuaded the government to introduce hepatitis B preventive measures, leading to the government’s introduction of a mass vaccination program in 1984, the first nation in the world to do so. [FULL STORY]