Hospitals around the nation were busy on Monday welcoming the arrival of “National Day babies,” as the country celebrated the Republic of China’s 100th anniversary.
The newborns were particularly welcome at a time when Taiwan has the lowest birth rate in the world and is facing the rapid aging of its population. Taipei City Hospital’s Heping Fuyou Branch had five “National Day babies” delivered as of noon on Monday, with a total of 12 births that day, double the number born there on Double Ten National Day last year, said Lin Chen-li (林陳立), the hospital’s chief medical officer.
“It’s been a long time since we last had such a good feeling,” Lin said.
The number of babies delivered at the hospital so far this year is up 16 percent compared with the same period last year and has already reached the total delivered in all of last year, Lin said.
More than 190,000 babies are expected to be born nationwide this year and the figure will continue to rise next year, probably topping 200,000, because next year is the Year of the Dragon, Lin said.
Many couples want to have a dragon boy or a dragon girl, considering them smarter and stronger than children born in other years.
Government statistics show that more than 320,000 babies were born in 1997, but less than 200,000 were born in 2008 and just 166,628 last year.
Taiwan Adventist Hospital in Taipei also saw a baby boom on Monday, with 12 babies scheduled. Only one of the first five babies was delivered by scheduled Caesarean section.
Wu Ling-ling (吳玲玲), an on-duty nursing supervisor at Taiwan Adventist, attributed the number of newborns delivered on Monday to it being the ROC’s centennial year and various government incentive programs to spur births.
In related news, 5,634 couples were married on Monday, more than double the number that wed on Double Ten day last year, Ministry of the Interior statistics show.
New Taipei City (新北市) beat the other cities and counties around the country, with 1,261 couples getting married there, the ministry said.
A ministry official said many Taiwanese people like to get married on special days.
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