Taipei's diplomatic corps yesterday donated NT$50,000 to the government as a symbolic gesture to support the ongoing fight against severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
The wife of Burkina Faso Ambassador Jacques Sawadogo handed over the donation to Wang Kuei-jung (
Ambassador Sawadogo is the chief of the diplomatic corps.
The wives of nine other ambassadors -- from El Salvador, Panama, Swaziland, Nicaragua, Sao Tome and Principe, the Solomon Islands, Guatemala, the Marshall Islands and Senegal -- attended the ceremony.
Mrs. Sawadogo, in her brief remarks, noted the diplomatic corps' concerns over the fight against SARS in this country.
She said the diplomats were confident of the ability of the government and people of Tai-wan to win the battle against the disease.
Wang expressed sincere gratitude for the show of support from the diplomats stationed in Taipei.
The contribution from the envoys came amid an increase of aid from overseas Taiwanese and foreign philanthropists in the form of donations of much-needed surgical masks and full-length protective body suits.
The ministry said nearly 55,000 surgical masks -- including some N95 respirators -- as well as 61 body suits have reached Center for Disease Control and the Taipei City Government.
Taiwanese based in northern California have donated the items to help physicians and nurses combating the disease, the ministry said.
It said Taipei's representative office in Vienna helped transport 5,000 surgical masks to Taipei that were donated by an Austria-based Taiwanese who declined to be named.
Taiwanese based in Thailand have also beefed up their donations of surgical masks, according to the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission.
The commission said some 120,000 masks are slated to arrive from Bangkok, in addition to 6,000 masks from donated earlier.
The Red Cross in Taiwan said it contacted its counterpart in Okinawa to seek possible donations of surgical masks early last month, prompting a Japanese man in his 80s to donate 10,000 masks.
"Since the outbreak of SARS, we were unable to buy surgical masks in Taiwan. So I rang up the Red Cross branch in Okinawa for help," said Kao Ming-han (
"An old man by the name of Uehara Kiyoyoshi came up to say he agreed to supply the masks," Kao said.
Kao said his office has already distributed the masks to the disadvantaged in Taipei City and Taipei County and planned to seek further help from its counterpart in Okinawa.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,