The Ministry of the Interior this week released an inspection report on fire safety and construction management in hospitals across the nation, with only one-quarter of the medical facilities scrutinized passing the inspections.
The report came after a joint supervision group, formed by officials from the ministry-affiliated Construction and Planning Agency and National Fire Agency, conducted spot-checks on 118 hospitals nationwide on their fire protection and construction management between April 1 and June 6.
Inspection results showed that only 30 hospitals passed all inspection criteria, while the remainder failed at least one, resulting in a certification rate of only 25.4 percent.
The report showed that hospitals tended to score higher on their facilities management, with more than half — 57.6 percent — of those examined up to standard. However, only 34.7 percent made the grade on their emergency preparation in the event of a fire.
The five special municipalities, 12 counties and three cities were divided into two examination groups based on the number of “regulated places” in the region. Administrative regions in the first group would see eight of their local hospitals inspected, while four would be inspected in the second group.
One hospital each was inspected on outlying islands, in Kinmen and Lienchiang counties.
Checking the consistency of original public safety inspection reports and on-site assessments, inspectors found that among the first group, the Greater Tainan Government conducted the most comprehensive inspections, earning a high consistency rate of 87.5 percent.
Next was the Changhua County Government, which scored 62.5 percent, while the Taoyuan County Government ranked last at 0 percent.
In the second group, the Kinmen County Government topped the list with a consistency rate of 100 percent, followed by the Chiayi City Government, Chiayi County Government and Yilan County Government — all of whose consistency rate stood at 75 percent.
However, inspection reports by five local governments — including the governments of Miaoli County, Nantou County, Keelung City, Hualien County and Lienchiang County — were found to be totally inconsistent with inspectors’ findings from on-site checks.
In terms of certification rates of local hospitals’ public safety facilities, the Changhua County Government was ranked the highest in the first group, scoring 62.5 percent, followed by the Taipei City Government at 50 percent.
However, none of the inspected hospitals in Greater Kaohsiung, Taoyuan County or Pingtung County managed to pass any of the qualification standards of checkup items.
Compared with the first group, the performances of local governments in the second group were far less desirable.
While the Chiayi City and Yilan County governments both enjoyed the highest rankings and earned an average certification rate of 75 percent, a total of seven local governments failed the random inspection.
Those included the governments of Keelung, Miaoli County, Nantou County, Hualien County, Penghu County, Kinmen County and Lienchiang County.
The ministry said that 54 hospitals failed inspections due to their lack of fire-fighting equipment, such as automatic fire alarms and smoke control, as well as indoor fire hydrants.
Fifty-three hospitals failed inspections mainly because of their poor fire prevention management, the ministry said, because the people they put in charge of the matter were not management-level employees and some staff members even exhibited a lack of familiarity with the operation of fire extinguishers and indoor fire hydrants.
Looking at construction management, the ministry said that issues related to emergency staircases and fire compartments were each the main cause of 24 local hospitals failing inspections.
Irregularities included having fireproof doors leading to emergency staircases removed, malfunctioning or unclosed, the ministry added.
In response to the dismal certification rate, the ministry called on local governments to enforce public safety, which it said could be achieved by investing in more manpower and effort.
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