Taipei - A Taiwanese man took his dead mother to hospital on the Taipei subway so her organs could be donated after hospital and emergency hotlines refused his appeal for help, a report said Wednesday.
Lin Yu-chao took his mother's body to the Veterans General Hospital over the weekend to comply with her wishes to be an organ donor.
"We didn't want to frighten the other passengers, so I had to disguise my mother by covering her face with a towel and keeping her head from tilting forward," Lin told the cable televsion TVBS.
They went unnoticed on the 40-minute ride.
Lin said he called Veterans General Hospital and requested an ambulance shortly after his 71-year-old mother, a faithful Buddhist, died at home from a long illness, but his call for help was turned down as they did not cover his area.
Lin then tried calling the emergency hotline, only to be refused again because the services only send ambulances to transport live patients.
In the end he decided to use the subway, fearing that if they got stuck in a traffic jam, his mother's organs would become unusable.
However, a hospital spokesperson said Lin had failed to make it clear that he wanted to make an organ donation.
"If he had stated his purpose, we would immediately have sent an ambulance no matter how far," said head nurse Sang Ying-ying.
Doctors at the hospital said at least three to 10 people are expected to benefit from the donation of his mother's organs including her corneas and bone marrow. - Sapa-AFP