■ Health
Baby born to dead mother
A baby was born in a Kaohsiung hospital to a mother who had been pronounced dead minutes before. This was the first such case in Taiwan. The medical team at the hospital managed to conduct a Cesarean Section on the 39-week-pregnant mother, who did not show any vital signs when rushed to the hospital after a fire accident. The mother, 37, had undergone several artificial insemination attempts before conceiving. The doctor who delivered the baby said that if anything unfortunate happens to a pregnant woman, even if she has no heart beat, she should be rushed to a hospital, which will give the fetus a better chance of survival.
■ Health
Dengue fever tackled
With the increasing incidence of dengue fever in Southeast Asia, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has taken measures to step up prevention measures in Taiwan. According to health official Wu Ping-hui (吳炳輝), Indonesia has seen 455 deaths due to dengue fever this year, with 35,166 people infected so far. In Vietnam, 3,300 people have been infected. He said that the figures were double the number of cases in Indonesia last year and triple that in Vietnam. In Taiwan, 17 cases of dengue fever have been reported. All these cases were patients who contracted the disease abroad. The CDC has brought together travel, transportation, labor and customs officials in a conference to work on prevention plans. The CDC said that temperature readings and blood samples would be taken of people arriving from several Southeast Asian nations in order to boost border surveillance.
■ Traffic
Few problems reported
The traffic situation in Taipei remained good yesterday despite a mass demonstration by the opposition camp that was held in the afternoon in front of the Presidential Office, according to the city's traffic authorities. Municipal traffic police officers said that the overall traffic situation in the city was largely good, except for some areas adjacent to the Presidential Office. It was reported that the number of demonstrators who gathered around the Presidential Office to protest what they claimed was an "unfair and rigged" March 20 presidential election was about 468,000. The opposition "pan-blue alliance" estimated a day earlier that more than 3,000 tour buses carrying supporters from around the country would flock to Taipei.
■ Politics
Calm down: Asustek chief
Amid the political upheaval following the presidential election, Shih Chung-tang (施崇棠), president of Asustek, the well-known computer manufacturer based in Taiwan, said yesterday he has high hopes for the opening of direct cross-strait links: trade, transportation and postal services. Shih said that both the pan-blue camp and the pan-green camp should calm down and settle political issues peacefully to stabilize the political and economic situation. The direct cross-strait "three links" should be the economic core after the presidential election, he said, adding that President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) should put cross-strait issues in perspective, and take global competition into consideration while working on China-related strategies. Taiwan will lose an opportunity to upgrade its competitive edge in the long term if proper strategies are not put in place, Shih said.
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