Fears of an outbreak of enteroviral infections and seasonal flu are looming over students and faculty members of a junior-high school in Hualien County, after several dentists in charge of recent mass oral examinations at the school failed to change their surgical gloves after each check-up.
Hualien-based Tzu Chi General Hospital (TCGH) on Monday and Tuesday dispatched dentists to conduct examinations on the more than 600 seventh-grade students at Guo Feng Junior High School, which was suspended for a week after a confirmed case of enterovirus infection was reported at the school last week.
On the first day of the dental check-ups, school authorities were surprised to discover that some of the dentists responsible for oral check-ups did not change their gloves after each examination.
Despite being asked to do so, the dentists agreed only to avoid direct physical contact with students’ cheeks, chins and corners of their mouths the next day, contending that since their hands would not be inside the students’ oral cavities, there was no need for them to put on new gloves after every examination, considering the large number of examinees.
“A pair of surgical gloves costs only a few NT dollars. Does it [TCGH] really need to save that money?” asked Kuo Cheng-an (郭呈安), a member of the school’s Parents’ Association.
Kuo said that because each examined student paid a fee of NT$350, doctors should have conducted check-ups in accordance with the highest standards of disease prevention and changed their gloves regardless of the number of examinees.
“Doctors must take care when conducting such examinations. Otherwise, the good intention of maintaining students’ dental health could become an avenue of infection,” Kuo said.
The incident also drew ire among the examined students, with many of them saying they felt sick after learning of it.
One student, surnamed Chen (陳), expressed concern about the possibility of infection, saying it would be unsanitary if someone else’s saliva were spread by the dentists’ gloves.
Another student, surnamed Wang (王), said it would be “gross” and “nauseating” if doctors’ gloves were in contact with other students’ mouths before touching his.
Defending the practices of his peers and himself, TCGH dentist Huang Chih-hao (黃志浩), who is among the dentists in question, said they had conducted examinations in line with standard protocols, in which doctors first check for tooth decay and tooth alignment with a laryngeal mirror and a dental explorer and use a new set of sterilized equipment for each examination.
“It is unnecessary to change gloves each time because our hands do not come into contact with any bodily fluid or mucosa in the oral cavity during the processes,” Huang said.
Hualien County Health Bureau said standards for changing surgical gloves differ from place to place, with Taipei and New Taipei City (新北市) leaving the decision to the discretion of the doctors, and Greater Taichung opting to act in accordance with contracts between doctors and patients.
“As for [dentists in] Hsinchu and Hualien counties, they abide by regulations stipulated by local dental associations, which only mandate them to put on new gloves should they have contact with patients’ mouths or lips,” the bureau said.
While saying sanitary standards were important, the Hualien County Government’s Department of Education said the department has, after factoring in the professional opinions of the hospital, reached an agreement with the school and the concerned dental association that doctors are not required to change their gloves unless they have touched a patient’s mouth or lips.
“Such a practice is meant to save time, rather than money,” the department said.
Meanwhile, the hospital said the dentists concerned would not be disciplined because they had not been negligent and that the controversy was the result of a misunderstanding.
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
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
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