The National Health Research Institute yesterday expressed concern over Taiwan's overuse of antibiotics, fearing that in the near future public health would be threatened as the drugs lose their effectiveness in treating life-threatening diseases.
The institute has turned over the results of the investigation to the Department of Health's Center for Disease Control so the center can combat the problem.
The results released yesterday by Hu Mom-to (何曼德), an emeritus investigator at the institute, stated that Taiwan's use of antibiotics is higher than that of Spain, which ranks number one among all WHO members for antibiotic usage.
Ho said that Taiwan's overuse of antibiotics was examined from three perspectives: outpatient services, surgery and medication.
According to the study, 27 defined daily doses (DDD) of antibiotics are used per 1,000 people in Taiwan annually, which is higher than that of the 21 DDDs used by Spain.
A DDD, defined by WHO, is a fixed unit of measurement that enables researchers to assess trends in drug consumption and to perform comparisons between population groups.
Ho said that surgeons should administer antibiotics half an hour before surgery is to take place. The investigation conducted by his team revealed that approximately 70 percent of the surgeons in Taiwan issue antibiotics prescriptions that last from three to 14 days after the surgery.
Ho said that the public's frequent visits to clinics is another factor that contributes to the overuse of antibiotics in Taiwan.
There are approximately 50 million visits made to doctors every year in Taiwan for respiratory tract infections. Half of these infections are treated with antibiotics.
Ho said that Americans who visit doctors for respiratory tract infections and their doctors are much less likely to abuse antibiotics than people in Taiwan.
If the use of antibiotics is not regulated soon, Ho warned that patients with life-threatening diseases would soon face a situation in which many drugs would lose their effectiveness because bacteria are becoming more resistant to the antibiotics.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift