Hospital pharmacists yesterday responded to calls for easier access to drugs by suggesting that a detailed categorization of certain drugs be carried out before decisions are made about which to make available without a prescription.
“Vitamins, for example, are something that appear to be safe to take. But most people are unaware that poisoning can occur if one takes too many vitamins,” Shen Li-chuan (沈麗娟), deputy director of National Taiwan University Hospital’s Pharmacy, said during a public hearing organized by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Huang Chih-hsiung (黃志雄).
BETTER ACCESS
Huang organized the hearing in response to calls for prescription-free access to medicines for minor problems.
“Everybody wants to get things done easily and quickly. Those who have a cold hope that they can buy cold remedies at a convenience store instead of going to see a doctor,” Huang said.
QUESTIONABLE
The public’s call for easier access to drugs, however, was questioned by hospital pharmacists and Department of Health officials.
They said that Taiwanese already enjoy much easier access to drugs than in the US or Japan.
Easy access to drugs is not always a good thing, the experts said, as uncontrolled pill-popping can harm a patient’s health.
CATEGORIZATION
“Instead of lifting regulations on medicines, I think we should work out a detailed categorization for all kinds of drugs,” Shen said, mentioning a recent case at her hospital where a patient ended up with kidney failure after taking too many vitamin C pills.
“I think we do a poor job categorizing drugs so many people get confused. This should be the priority,” she said.
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:
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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