In a bid to combat Taiwan's low birth rate, DPP Legislator Chou Ya-shu (
The law, which is intended to be independent of the Genetic Health Law (
If the law is passed, the government would be obligated to offer free checkups to pregnant women no matter if they are part of the National Health Insurance scheme in a bid to offer protection to all sections of society.
Chou said that although the government wants to change the name and content of the Genetic Health Law to the mother-child health protection law, the amended law still contained little about health care for mothers and their children. She said that unless the government adds articles concerning health care for pregnant women and their babies into its new version of the Genetic Health Law, she would push for a separate mother-child law.
But Chou also said that she has separated her draft from the Genetic Health Law because the two laws are based on different concepts.
"The mother-child health protection draft deals with the seriously decreasing birth rate in Taiwan, and the protection of the health of the mother and child, while the Genetic Health Law focuses on abortion regulations," Chou said.
Dr. Lu Hung-chi (呂鴻基), emeritus professor of pediatrics at National Taiwan University and former chairman of the Children's Health Promotion Society, said that the new law, which urges the government to take better care of pregnant women and their babies, should lessen the number of deaths among newborns and women giving birth.
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
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