The recent melamine scare was a “small case” as there are other threats such as enterovirus and flu that are far more worrying than the toxic industrial chemical, Department of Health Minister Yeh Ching-chuan (葉金川) said yesterday.
Yeh made the remarks at an event held at the National Health Research Institutes (國家衛生研究院) in Miaoli.
Raw material imported from China for milk powder and creamers was found to be tainted with melamine in September.
The discovery led to product recalls by several companies in Taiwan and caused a panic among consumers.
Commenting on recent plans by the Executive Yuan to establish a Taiwan Food and Drug Administration, Yeh said the recent health scare was only one of the reasons that prompted the government to set up a food and drug management mechanism.
“Melamine actually is not that scary. I was the only one in the whole of Taiwan that got hurt by melamine, my neck was a bit painful...” Yeh said.
He was referring to an incident on Oct. 3 during which he was caught in a clash between pan-blue and pan-green lawmakers at a press conference at the legislature about the melamine issue.
During the scuffle, Yeh was grabbed by the neck and throttled.
He was subsequently taken to hospital, suffering from dizziness, cardiac arrythmia and high blood pressure.
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