A survey released by the Health, Welfare and Environmental Foundation yesterday suggested that most women think the government should pick up the tab for human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccinations.
The survey asked 935 women in several major metropolitan areas a series of questions relating to the HPV vaccine. When given to young girls, the vaccine lowers the risk of cervical cancer later in life by affording protection against a number of strains of HPV.
Of those surveyed, 58.8 percent said the government should cover the full cost of the vaccination (approximately NT$4,000), while 29.1 percent said the vaccination should be partially funded by the government. Only 1.6 percent said individuals should pay for their own vaccinations, while 10.6 percent said they were "not sure."
Fifty-eight percent of respondents said they would be willing to pay for their daughters' vaccinations. That figure rises to 77.8 percent if the vaccine is subsidized by the government.
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However, the HPV vaccine is expensive and the foundation said a trust fund of more than NT$1 billion would be needed to fund a program of vaccinations.
The government already picks up the tab for pap smears for women over the age of 30 triennially. However, only 66 percent of the women surveyed said they had had a pap smear in the past three years.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift