Yesterday officials from the Prenatal Genetics Department encouraged married women and men to get pre-pregnancy health checks in order to avoid unforeseen problems that may occur during pregnancy or after the birth of their child.
"A pre-pregnancy health check-ups is the most basic step in the area of prenatal genetics," said Tsan Shun-hua (昝舜華), the head of the department.
She also said that getting a clean bill of health could help reduce the number of women not giving birth.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Interior 21,6000 childbirths were registered last year, a decrease of 4.7 percent from the previous year. The number of childbirths also decreased from 1.76 in 1994 to 1.24 in 2003. In contrast, the number of elderly people increased from 10.8 percent in 1993 to 13 percent in 2003.
Check-ups will take place from starting in December and a NT$1,515 subsidized fee will be provided for women, and a NT$655 fee for men. Places are limited to 800 in number.
Hospitals that provide pre-pregnancy check-ups include the Songshan Armed Forces Hospital, Taipei City Hospital, Cathay General Hospital, Country Hospital, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taiwan National University Hospital, and Mackay Memorial Hospital.
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