SOCIETY
Anti-Poverty Alliance formed
Several civic groups yesterday officially launched the Anti-Poverty Alliance, aiming to push for policies to reduce poverty in the country. The alliance, which includes the Taiwan Labor Front, the Taiwan Peacetime Foundation, Amnesty International Taiwan, the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, the Taiwan Alliance for Fair Tax Reform and The Homeless of Taiwan, is concerned particularly about the nation’s widening gap between the rich and poor as well as skyrocketing real-estate prices. The alliance plans to come up with a set of more concrete policy agendas to address the poverty issue within a year and seeks to work with sympathetic politicians.
HEALTH
HIV plan worries groups
Activist groups and individuals voiced concern at a public forum yesterday about a government plan to end free treatment for people infected with HIV. The soaring drug fees that come with the growing number of HIV/AIDS patients, as well as a large budget deficit, have led the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to consider halting the free treatment program that has existed since 2006. However, the CDC said treatment for HIV/AIDS patients would remain free until legislation dictates otherwise, although it did not rule out “other alternatives” to reduce expenditures. The annual budget for AIDS treatment last year was NT$1.52 billion (US$47.5 million), but with the proposed subsidy plan, the government would save only NT$30 million per year, a spokesman for Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association said. AIDS activists said the government should instead consider procuring generic drugs and encourage local pharmaceutical companies to develop non-branded products, which could reduce costs.
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