The Department of Health (DOH) announced yesterday that NT$23 billion will be spent on reforming the country's epidemic-prevention system and establishing clinics for infectious diseases.
The Cabinet's SARS prevention committee also disbanded yesterday as committee head Lee Ming-liang (
"Hopefully, I won't be asked to come back again," Lee said.
Lee, who stepped down from his post last year, was ordered in early May to replace his successor, former DOH head Twu Shiing-jer (
Lee said he would never forget the nightmare at the Hwa Chang Public Housing Complex in Taipei City in early May, which put more than 300 residents into home quarantine.
To express his appreciation to key figures in anti-SARS battle, Lee presented gifts to Taipei City Bureau of Health Director Chang Heng (
DOH Director-General Chen Chien-jen (
According to Chen, the DOH will spend NT$23 billion to reform the epidemic-prevention system.
He said that 19 SARS hospitals will be transformed back to regular facilities while four to six new special hospitals for infectious diseases would be established around the country.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) under the DOH yesterday released statistics suggesting the mortality rate from SARS in Taiwan is about 10 percent.
According to the CDC, there were 3,033 SARS reports filed between March 14 and July 14. They include 617 probable cases and 1,349 suspected cases.
Among them, health officials said, 84 patients are confirmed to have died of SARS, while other 75 deaths of people infected by the SARS virus could be attributed to other diseases. In addition, 34 deaths were linked to other causes, such as suicide.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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