Taiping Hospital

Taiping Hospital (GPS: 4.85089, 100.73747), or General Hospital of Taiping, is the main hospital in Taiping, Perak. It occupies a large piece of land off Jalan Taming Sari, and is also bordered by Jalan Abdul Jalil and Jalan Stesen.

Taiping Hospital was started as Yeng Wah, the Chinese Pauper Hospital, to provide medical care for the indenture labourers working the mining fields of Taiping. It was spearheaded by leading members of the mining community in the 1880's, following an outbreak of beri-beri among the mining coolies. The labourers were charged an annual fee of 50 cents. It worked very well for the first six months, and then it became increasingly difficult to collect the fee from the mining labourers. Nevertheless, the hospital was able to improve the well being of the mining labourers, resulting in a decline in the death rate among them.

The hospital struck a first on 3 Feb 1896, by being the first hospital in Malaya to be installed with an X-ray machine. It was reported in the newspaper that during the opening ceremony, the apparatus was tried out on its first "patient", a pomfret (bawal putih).

Taiping Hospital was where my nanny died. She was 81 years old. By that time, she has left my mother's employment for about a year and was enjoying her retirement. Her nephew had taken her to Taiping to visit relatives. The journey (at that time, there was no North South Expressway) must have been too taxing for her, as she fell violently ill on her arrival in Taiping. When news reached us in Penang, my mother brought me and another of nanny's relatives to visit her in the Taiping Hospital. Unfortunately by the time we arrived she had passed away. It was the first time I ever saw a dead person, and one whom I loved very much, for she looked after me when I was growing up. At that time I was only 7 or 8 years old, but I remember the trip to Taiping, to this very day.

Address

Hospital Taiping
Jalan Taming Sari (Main Road)
34000 Taiping

Taiping Hospital is on the Map of Taiping, Perak

Back to Discover Taiping, Perak mainpage; list of Hospitals in Taiping, Hospitals in Perak and Hospitals in Malaysia

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Dear visitor, thank you so much for reading this page. My name is Timothy Tye and my hobby is to find out about places, write about them and share the information with you on this website. I have been writing this site since 5 January 2003. Originally (from 2003 until 2009, the site was called AsiaExplorers. I changed the name to Penang Travel Tips in 2009, even though I describe more than just Penang but everywhere I go (I often need to tell people that "Penang Travel Tips" is not just information about Penang, but information written in Penang), especially places in Malaysia and Singapore, and in all the years since 2003, I have described over 20,000 places.

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