■ POLITICS
Canadian delegation arrives
A 10-member Canadian parliamentary delegation led by Member of Parliament (MP) Carol Skelton arrived in Taiwan yesterday, according to a press release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Skelton, who was minister of National Revenue of Canada from 2006 to last year, is now a member of Canada's House of Commons and is also a member for life of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada. The delegation, including one senator and four other MPs, was invited by the Taiwan-based Chinese International Economic Cooperation Association, according to the press release. The delegation members are expected to meet President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and various other officials. As the visit coincides with the Saturday legislative elections, the delegation will meet legislative candidates of some of the major parties and visit a vote-counting center on polling day. It is also scheduled to tour the National Palace Museum, Taipei 101 and the Southern Taiwan Science Park before leaving Taiwan on Sunday.
■ Health
Transplants help two
Taipei Veterans General Hospital (TVGH) has successfully conducted Taiwan's first sequential liver transplants, in which a teenager received a new liver from a deceased donor and his old liver was transplanted into another man, hospital officials announced yesterday. The operations took place last month when a liver was taken from a nine-year-old braindead girl and transplanted into the body of a 16-year-old boy, whose liver was in turn given to a 59-year-old patient suffering from liver cancer. The boy has familial hypercholesterolemia, a rare genetic disease that blocks the circulation of cholesterol within the blood vessels. Without a transplant, he would have been unlikely to survive past the age of 20. Because the recipient of the boy's liver does not have the condition, he will be able to survive as long as he controls his diet, said Liu Jun-shu (劉君恕), the chief surgeon who led the team that performed the transplants. The mother of the teenage boy said at a press conference that her son had been "blessed with the chance to be reborn".
■ Health
Journal teams up with NCKU
US-based journal Experimental Biology and Medicine has established an Asian chapter at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) in Tainan, marking the first time an international science journal has set up a branch office in Taiwan, senior NCKU officials said yesterday. The opening ceremony of the office was hosted by the journal's editor-in-chief Steven Goodman, NCKU president Michael Lai (賴明詔) and NCKU professor of medicine Lei Huan-yao (黎煥耀), who also heads the chapter. Explaining the need for an Asian chapter, Goodman noted that almost 30 percent of the scientific papers the journal receives come from Asian academics, presenting a need to recruit more editing staff based in Asia, as well as having a standing branch office here.
■ SOCIETY
Suicide rate falls 19%
The national suicide rate fell by 19 percent last year compared to 2006, a Department of Health press release said yesterday. In the first three quarters of 2006, there were 19.3 suicides per 100,000 people, falling to 16.1 suicides per 100,000 in the first three quarters of last year, according to department figures. However, suicide remained the ninth leading cause of death during both years, according to the figures.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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