Tsai Yu-ting, a nurse at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in the northeastern city of Keelung, died by draining her own blood.

Her younger sister found her lying motionless under a quilted coverlet, but after picking up the coverlet, she was shocked to see that her sister had died by using a blood transfusion pipe to drain her own blood into a bucket.

Tsai said in a suicide note that several years ago when her father, a fishing boat owner, ran up heavy debts, she borrowed large sums of money from her bank to help him without his knowing it.

After years of struggling, she found that, with her limited salary from the hospital, it was beyond her capability to repay the loans. As a way out, she chose to end her life to settle the debt once and for all, the note said.

Taiwan has some 9 million credit card holders, and about 700,000 of them, dubbed “card slaves,” can only pay the minimum balance on their credit card debt each month, according to unofficial estimates by banks.

According to police statistics, an average of 40 “card slaves” in Taiwan committed suicide every month in 2006 and 2007.

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