A neon dragon swooped tothe beat of Chinese drums, powered by more than a dozen youngsters from Taipei County's Gengliao Elementary School.
"When they get to junior high, they'll get to do the dragon dance on roller skates," said Wang Yao-te (
Wang said that dragon dancing is a physically demanding activity and a great way to motivate students to get fit.
Wang's school, along with 516 others, are part of a NT$60 million (US$1.8 million) a year program encouraging schools to promote students' health cosponsored by the Department of Health (DOH), the Department of Education and the Bureau of Health Promotion.
Wang Hsiu-hung ( 王秀紅), deputy head of the DOH, said that Taiwan took its cue from the WHO's Global School Health Initiative.
"Although we are not a part of the WHO, Taiwan pays close attention to international health trends," she said. "When it comes to investing in the health of our young people, we want to be in step with the world."
The program has grown quickly since its inception in 2004, when only 38 schools participated.
Though schools have a certain amount of control over what they do, one aspect of the program is not optional.
"Cigarette and betel-nut prevention must start early," said Wang Hsiu-hung. "We lead the world in oral cancer and cigarette-related health issues are estimated to account for NT$30 billion to NT$40 billion of the NHI's overall budget of NT$400 billion."
Taipei County's Shenkeng Elementary School was honored during a ceremony yesterday for its effort in encouraging better nutrition.
Like all Taipei County schools with more than 40 classes and their own kitchen serving lunch, Shenkeng elementary has a staff nutritionist "who went above and beyond" regular duties to ensure good nutrition for the students, principal Lin Chien-tsung (林建棕) said.
Lin is promoting education on nutrition so that, even when not in school, students will know what foods are good for them.
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
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,
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