The plan to give free pneumococcal vaccines to senior citizens will be implemented next year, the Department of Health (DOH) said on Monday.
“The DOH is planning to allocate funding for the vaccines this year,” said DOH Minister Yeh Ching-chuan (葉金川) said. “It is estimated that starting in 2010, people over 75 who are at high risk of contracting pneumonia, will be vaccinated.”
Yeh said the DOH would establish a vaccine foundation this year and would welcome donations from the public and the business community.
“If the foundation gets more donations, then the DOH will contemplate giving free shots to the over 70s,” he said.
DOH Deputy Minister Chen Tzay-jinn (陳再晉) said that Taiwan has about 1 million people aged 75 or older, and predicted their numbers would grow by 628,000 over the next five years, underpinning the need to quickly secure more doses of the vaccine.
One dose costs about NT$1,000, but if purchased in large volumes, total expenses could be kept to within NT$100 million, he said.
The DOH’s Centers for Disease Control estimated that about 85,000 senior citizens seek treatment for pneumonia every year, with 6,000 of them dying of the disease.
Streptococcus pneumoniae, the bacteria that the vaccine fights, is the leading cause of pneumonia fatalities, accounting for 30 percent of such deaths.
Taiwan would benefit from more integrated military strategies and deployments if the US and its allies treat the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea as a “single theater of operations,” a Taiwanese military expert said yesterday. Shen Ming-shih (沈明室), a researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said he made the assessment after two Japanese military experts warned of emerging threats from China based on a drill conducted this month by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Eastern Theater Command. Japan Institute for National Fundamentals researcher Maki Nakagawa said the drill differed from the
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A 79-year-old woman died today after being struck by a train at a level crossing in Taoyuan, police said. The woman, identified by her surname Wang (王), crossed the tracks even though the barriers were down in Jhongli District’s (中壢) Neili (內壢) area, the Taoyuan Branch of the Railway Police Bureau said. Surveillance footage showed that the railway barriers were lowered when Wang entered the crossing, but why she ventured onto the track remains under investigation, the police said. Police said they received a report of an incident at 6:41am involving local train No. 2133 that was heading from Keelung to Chiayi City. Investigators
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