Pledging to work within the guidelines of the World Health Organization's (WHO) Healthy Cities Project, the Taipei City Government yesterday announced a series of strategies to promote good health, including a zero-waste target, completion of construction of the MRT and better water resources.
In the latest effort to promote Taipei's own version of the project, a team of project officials led by Taipei Deputy Mayor King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) held a press conference to promote the project and invite the public to work with them to build a healthier Taipei.
Also in attendance, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
"London won the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic bid with a proposal highlighting zero waste and low carbon and bringing long-term environmental and social benefits to the city long after the games' end," Ma said. "With more cities becoming environmentally conscious, it is our goal to develop Taipei as an international city that is not only technologically but also environmentally developed."
The WHO argued in 1984 that promoting good health involved enhancing the ability of the public to take control of the process. It said that the improvement of the community environment, the cultivation of civic rights and the stimulation of participation and effective investment should be emphasized to maintain and promote the health of communities.
The Healthy Cities Project, which contains five strategies described in the WHO Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion in 1986, intends for cities to formulate healthy civic policies, create supportive environments, strengthen community action, develop skills of individuals and adjust the orientation of health services.
To boost Taipei's claim to being a healthy city, the city government is introducing a target of "zero waste" through recycling and reuse of garbage, and hopes to reduce the overall amount of garbage to 53 percent of the present amount by 2010.
In addition, the city is working on upgrading drainage and sewage systems. With the home-connection rate to the sewage network expected to reach 73 percent this year, the improvements will hopefully increase water resources, officials 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