Free hepatitis type B and C carrier tests will be included in routine health checks for people over 40 with effect from Aug. 1, the Department of Health said yesterday.
The decision, announced yesterday on World Hepatitis Day, is aimed at detecting hepatitis in the adult population and preventing liver scarring and liver cancer as a result of chronic hepatitis.
Last year, liver cancer was the No. 1 cause of death among men and the No. 2 cause of death among women in Taiwan. Of the 7,759 people who died in Taiwan from liver cancer last year, 70 percent were hepatitis B carriers, while 20 percent were type C carriers, statistics showed.
Photo: Yang Ching-ching, Taipei Times
Carriers of the virus are at higher risk of developing chronic hepatitis and liver cancer, the department said, advising that healthy carriers be tested every six months.
Chronic hepatitis, known as the “silent disease,” has few or no symptoms, said Chen Ding-shinn (陳定信), chair of the Coalition to Eradicate Viral Hepatitis in Asia Pacific.
Chen said more than 50 percent of chronic liver patients in the Asia-Pacific region have not been tested and nearly 40 percent do not have access to free or subsidized medical treatment.
There are about 2 billion people worldwide infected with hepatitis B, according to WHO estimates. About 350 million live with chronic infection and up to 600,000 people die each year of acute or chronic hepatitis B, data from the WHO showed.
According to the non-governmental World Hepatitis Alliance, one in every 12 adults worldwide has hepatitis B, which is 50 to 100 times more infectious than HIV.
Hepatitis B is a viral disease transmitted through contact with body fluids and it is transmissible from mother to baby at birth.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift