With the arrival of students’ summer vacations, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in partnership with the Taiwan AIDS Foundation, held an awareness-raising event at Taipei Main Station yesterday to encourage young people to adopt safe sexual practices to protect themselves from HIV.
Taking up the cause of “National HIV Testing Day,” established in the US as an annual observance to promote HIV testing, the CDC said it hopes to raise awareness among the public not only of the virus, but also of the significance of HIV testing.
CDC Director-General Chang Feng-yee (張峰義) advised young people to stay in a stable relationships with a single, regular partner and to have safe sex.
“And if that really isn’t possible, take a HIV test within three months of having unprotected sex,” Chang added.
According to statistics compiled by the centers, as of the end of last year 24,239 Taiwanese were living with HIV, with nearly 20 percent of them aged between 15 and 24.
In the past three years the number of new HIV infections among young people has been increasing at a rapid pace, with young people reporting the highest rate of new HIV infections among all age groups, accounting for 26.2 percent, 27.5 percent and 28.6 percent of reported new infections for 2010, 2011and last year respectively, the CDC said.
The data provided by the CDC also shows that of the 635 new infections reported last year by people aged between 15 and 24, 552 had engaged in male homosexual experiences, increasing from 479 in 2011 and 418 in 2010.
Ninety percent of new infections were caused by unprotected sex, both homosexual and heterosexual, the agency said, which also attributed some of the infections to drug abuse, as a person under the influence of certain drugs, such as stimulants, depressants and hallucinogens, is more likely to engage in risky behavior, including sexual contacts.
“About NT$3 billion [US$100.3 million] is spent every year on HIV and AIDS, with between 10 percent and 20 percent spent on prevention, awareness-raising campaigns and testing, while the rest is allocated to treatment,” Chang said.
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:
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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