While the vast majority of parents are concerned about their children’s health, the Child Welfare League Foundation (CWLF) voiced concerns over a survey released yesterday that showed few parents have accurate medical knowledge.
Since Autumn is the season in which children are most likely to catch the flu or a cold, the foundation conducted a survey among parents to learn about their understanding on maintaining their childrens’ health.
The results are worrisome, the foundation said.
Photo: Yang Chiu-ying, Taipei Times
“The survey results showed that as many as 90.3 percent of the parents polled are concerned about their children’s health. However, it is worrisome that only 13.8 percent of the respondents have correct medical knowledge,” Chiu Ching-hui (邱靖惠), a section chief at the foundations’s Research and Development Department, told a press conference in Taipei.
“Some of the more serious problems include not keeping a medical record of their child, being too worried when their children are sick, getting information from non-authoritative sources, not following doctor’s recommendations and thinking that health supplements are medicines,” Chiu said.
The survey, with 1,122 valid samples collected from parents with children under the age of 12 across the country, showed that about 20 percent of respondents do not keep a record of their children’s health, while more than 50 percent of the parents do not know that there is medication tailored to children’s needs, and therefore never ask doctors for it.
In addition, 53.6 percent of parents said that they would send their children to larger hospitals if their children were sick, 67.6 percent of the respondents would seek treatment or advice from several different doctors at the same time, while 37.3 percent of the respondents said they would take their children to another doctor if the illness was not cured within a week.
“This is not a very good habit because taking children to too many different doctors is a waste of medical resources,” Chiu said.
She added that 73.1 percent of respondents said they obtain medical information from the Internet, 61.6 percent seek information in newspapers and magazines, while 44 percent seek help from friends, but only 33.5 percent get information from professionals in childrens’ clinics and only 25 percent ask for help from general clinics.
“What’s most worrisome is that 60.9 percent of the parents polled said they do not follow doctors’ instructions and make alterations to the advised dose of medicines,” Chiu said.
In addition, 25 percent of the parents polled believe that health supplements are a suitable substitute for medicine, Chiu said.
“Parents play an important role in safeguarding their childrens’ health, but we’d like to urge parents to acquire more medical knowledge through reliable, professional and authoritative sources, and follow doctors’ instructions — otherwise, parental concerns may become a threat to a child’s health,” foundation executive director Chen Li-ju (陳麗如) said.
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