Only about one in five women considered to have a high risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer undergoes regular screening for the disease in Taiwan, a figure that is much lower than in developed countries in the West, the Department of Health said yesterday.
About half-a-million Taiwanese women in the 45-to-69 age bracket, considered the high-risk group, underwent breast cancer screening last year, with 1,615 testing positive for the disease, the department’s Bureau of Health Promotion said.
From January to October last year, 123,000 women in this age bracket had a mammogram. Among them, 419 cases of breast cancer were discovered, of which more than half were at stage zero or one, which meant that the cancer was detected at a relatively early stage.
“Women in the high-risk group should get a mammogram once every two years,” bureau deputy director Kung Hsien-lan (孔憲蘭) said.
Kung said Taiwanese are accustomed to visiting hospitals only when they feel sick, but regular checkups even when they feel healthy are important for early detection and treatment.
“The earlier [cancer] is detected, the earlier treatments can start and the higher the rate of success,” she said, adding that surgery during the early stages of the disease would not lead to a full mastectomy.
Compared with developed countries in the West, where more than half of the women who discover that they have breast cancer are only at stage zero or one, in Taiwan, that figure is about 38 percent, meaning many realize they have breast cancer when it is too late, she said.
Kung said fat-rich diets and high caloric intake have raised the cancer-risk profile of Taiwanese women.
Bureau statistics showed that 7,500 new cases of breast cancer are detected in Taiwan annually. The fatal illness is the fourth cause of death for women in Taiwan.
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