■Health
SARS count reduced
The Department of Health (DOH) yesterday marked down the number of pro-bable severe acute respira-tory syndrome (SARS)
cases in the country to 28 after clearing one patient of the disease. DOH Deputy Secretary-General Lee Long-teng (李龍騰) said SARS
tests on the 58-year-old
man were negative but he had shown signs of infec-
tion by other agents. The patient, who had been in China between Feb. 21 and March 21, was thought to
be suffering from SARS
as he had displayed the symptoms of a cough,
fever and pneumonia, according to Lee. There
have been no reported deaths from SARS in the country.
■ Health
Radio ad plugs WHO bid
The "One FM" radio station in Geneva has begun to broadcast Taiwan's appeal for admission to the World Health Organization (WHO) and to attend the World Health Assembly as an observer. The advertisement, in French, says that the
WHO has a noble goal to improve the health of all mankind, but the 23 million people on Taiwan have
been denied all benefits
that the WHO can provide. The ad also says that Tai-
wan needs more interna-tional sympathy and support for its bid to join the organization, noting that it has donated money to international health and medical foundations and provided medical aid to different parts of the world.
■ Health
Earth Day commemorated
The Environmental Protec-tion Administration spon-sored a series of activities
in Kaohsiung County yesterday to mark Earth
Day 2003, which falls on Tuesday. More than 1,000 volunteers gathered in Kaohsiung, swearing to preserve Taiwan's reputation as a beautiful island. Kao-hsiung Country Magistrate Yang Chiu-hsing (楊秋興)
said Taiwan used to be a beautiful island, where
many children swam and fished in creeks. Now that the rivers are polluted, he said, Taiwan is working actively to promote the reestablishment of a healthy and sustainable environ-ment. Yang expressed his gratitude to the volunteers for their help to local governments in cleaning
up rubbish and removing 1,633 tonnes of trash, as
well as successfully fighting the mosquito-borne dengue fever last year. EPA Administrator Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said his agency has spent NT$1.6 billion (US$46 million) to hire unemployed people to clean up tourist areas as part of the government's project to increase employment.
■ Charity
Houses for El Salvador
A Taipei branch of Zonta International announced yesterday that it will donate two houses to victims of
the earthquake that hit El Salvador in 2001. A cere-mony was held yesterday
in Taipei's Ambassador Hotel, during which El Salvadoran Ambassador Francisco Ricardo Santana expressed gratitude to the people of Taiwan for their help. Chiang Tzu-ning (蔣次寧), chairwoman of the Taipei arm of Zonta International -- a world organization of business and professional executives dedicated to advancing the status of women -- said her group decided to help after seeing that millions of Salvadorans were homeless due to many natural disasters. This is the first time that the Taipei branch has offered assistance abroad. The two houses will be located in the town of Chacarrera in the capital, San Salvador.
Agencies
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching