A delegation from Indonesia, in conjunction with the Taipei Association of Travel Agents, yesterday held a press conference to clarify the recent dysentery outbreak in Bali and the outcome of subsequent health investigations conducted by health authorities on the island.
Between Nov. 7 and Nov. 24, a total of 111 Taiwanese tourists returning from Bali were diagnosed with shigella dysentery by the Center for Disease Control (CDC). The outbreak has been traced to select Bali restaurants commonly visited by Taiwanese tourists.
I Gde Pitana, head of the Indonesian travel and hospitality industry delegation, said "This visit is to show that we are serious about handling the situation. We hope to bring about better cooperation between our governments," Pitana said.
However, according to deputy director of the CDC, Lin Ding (
The Indonesian delegates had failed to inform the center of the press conference until less than an hour before it took place, which was too late for the center to send a representative to the press conference.
Furthermore, while the center had identified the outbreak to be shigella dysentery, the Indonesian delegation did not immediately report finding shigella germs in its samples.
The press release prepared by the Indonesian delegates only reported finding coli pathogens.
According to Made Molin Yudiasa, head of the Bali Department of Health, of the 200 rectal samples taken, eight samples tested positive for coli pathogens. Forty-two water samples had yielded four positive coli samples.
More than 120 food samples revealed no coli pathogens. Only after questions by the press did Yudiasa admit that shigella germs had also been found.
Yudiasa admitted that the Dirty Duck and the Golden Palace, two restaurants named by Taiwanese health authorities as possible sources of the outbreak, were now identified as not meeting hygiene standards.
"We have to trust our own lab results. They [Taiwanese authorities] haven't presented any hard evidence for their findings. Furthermore, we know that the germs that caused these cases of dysentery are not indigenous to Taiwan," Lin said.
However, Yudiasa said that the discrepancy in the findings was a result of different samples being tested.
While Taiwan had taken samples from returning tourists, the Bali health department had taken samples from local residents and restaurants.
At the center of the issue is the problem of falling tourism figures. Yao Ta-guang (姚大光), deputy director of the Taipei Association of Travel Agents, said that tourist numbers from Taiwan to Bali were down 60 percent from before the outbreak.
Lin admitted that the impact health warnings had on the travel industry was one possible reason for the unexpected press conference.
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,