A "Quit and Win" contest encouraging people to stop smoking has attracted overwhelming interest, prompting organizers to relax participation criteria for the smokers' partners yesterday.
The non-profit, anti-smoking John Tung Foundation decided to relax the sign-up criteria for non-smoking partners -- who act as witnesses for those who wish to quit -- to include boyfriends and girlfriends.
The John Tung Foundation began accepting registration forms for this year's international "Quit and Win" competition on Thursday.
The nation's 4.5 million smokers can vie for over NT$1 million in cash by giving up tobacco for a month, organizers said.
According to the rules, anyone aged over 18 who has smoked for at least one year can participate in the contest, which will be held between May 2 and May 29.
Participants must form a team with a non-smoking partner who will act as a witness for the would-be abstainer.
In addition to winning the grand prize of NT$600,000, those who register before April 30 will also have the chance to win six other prizes of NT$60,000 each, foundation officials said.
The officials said the biennial event was the only quit-smoking contest recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO).
They pointed out that 23,000 local teams took part in the first international quit-smoking campaign in May 2002 in which 98 countries participated.
A follow-up of participants one year later found that the success rate for quitting was 37.2 percent -- much higher than the 20 percent figure listed by the WHO.
"This year's goal is to get 30,000 teams to participate," organizers said.
According to the John Tung Foundation, many people have called them not just to find out about the contest, but also to obtain information on how to quit smoking.
In response, the foundation produced a four-point method to help smokers overcome difficulties they might encounter during the quitting period.
The method involves taking 15 slow, deep breaths, drinking a cup of cold water, stretching and washing the face or brushing the teeth.
If this does not help, quitters can call for professional help on their hotline at 0800-636-363 or visit www.quitandwin.org.tw for online counselling.
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
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
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