An AIDS activist group issued a statement yesterday that accused the Taoyuan County Government of neglecting the rights of people infected with HIV/AIDS.
The Persons with HIV/AIDS Rights Advocacy Association of Taiwan protested that disabled AIDS patients in the county have reportedly not been allowed to participate in a vocational training program because of their health condition.
The county-commissioned vocational training initiative, aimed at helping the physically and -mentally challenged develop job skills, refused to assist disabled AIDS sufferers, said Chang Cheng-hsueh (張正學), a social worker with the association.
“This is an unfair restriction and clearly a violation of the law,” Chang said.
By law, institutions or organizations cannot use HIV infection as the sole reason to deny an individual’s right to receive an education or seek employment.
Last year, Chang said, an AIDS patient was referred to a less conveniently located vocational training center because the program administrator said the medical waste the patient produced could possibly infect other trainees.
“This year, the program’s online brochure bluntly states that those with reportable communicable diseases are not welcome,” he said.
Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Chou Jih-haw (周志浩) said the county government could not exclude AIDS patients from the program.
“Such improper statements should not be in its online brochure,” Chou said.
Chang complained that the county government, the contractor of the program, had ignored the seriousness of the issue and did not censure the program administrator for the mistake or correct his behavior.
However, Lin Yang-pin, the head of the vocational training center at The Potential Development Center for Spinal Cord Sufferers and the program’s administrator, said the controversy stemmed from a misunderstanding.
The disabled AIDS person in question was referred to another vocational center because he could receive better medical attention there, Lin said.
Asked about the restrictions imposed on people with AIDS in this year’s program brochure, Lin said the online content was an older version of the brochure and had not been updated.
The online brochure was removed from the program’s Web site after attracting media attention.
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:
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
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