GOVERNMENT
DOH to become ministry
The Department of Health (DOH) is to be officially restructured as the Ministry of Health and Welfare tomorrow, officials said yesterday, adding that this was the department’s most intensive reform since it was founded n 1971. The change is being made so the department can better handle the challenges posed by demographic changes to strengthen healthcare and welfare to provide comprehensive services to all, be it physical, psychological or social, officials said. The department said the reform was in line with an ethos promoted by the WHO that health departments aim to “[ensure] that all people can use the promotive, preventive, curative, rehabilitative and palliative health services they need, of sufficient quality to be effective, while also ensuring that the use of these services does not expose the user to financial hardship.” Other than the department’s present units and five subsidiary bodies, the new ministry will incorporate the Ministry of the Interior’s Department of Social Affairs, Child Welfare Bureau, Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention Committee and National Pension Supervisory Committee. It will also absorb the National Research Institute of Chinese Medicine under the Ministry of Education. Thirteen social welfare institutions under the interior ministry will also be incorporated.
SOCIETY
Nauru group to visit
A group of handicapped children and young adults from Nauru will visit next week to learn about Taiwanese culture and meet with physically and mentally challenged Taiwanese, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. At the invitation of the ministry, the 10 Nauruans, who are either visually or hearing impaired, or physically disabled, will visit from Saturday to Aug. 3. The Taipei-based Eden Social Welfare Foundation has been commissioned to organize the group’s itinerary, the ministry said. During their stay, the group will visit an Eden care center in New Taipei City (新北市),which provides care for dementia patients and the severely handicapped, as well as a center catering specifically to handicapped children in New Taipei City. They will also visit a factory run by Eden in Greater Taichung that trains handicapped people to bake pastries and earn a living, the ministry said. The group will also visit the National Palace Museum and the Yingge Ceramics Museum in New Taipei City.
EARTHQUAKE
Quake hits Hualien
An earthquake struck eastern Taiwan early Sunday, with no reports of casualties or damages thus far, reports the Central Weather Bureau. The magnitude 4.1 tremor, according to preliminary reports, occurred at 3:19am with the epicenter at 34.9km north by west of Hualien City Hall and 9.3km underground, the bureau said. The shock was felt in eastern and northern Taiwan, with the highest movement intensity reaching 3, the bureau said.
NATURE
Baby panda eating well: zoo
Taipei Zoo’s two-week-old panda cub, nicknamed “Rice Meatball” (肉圓), has a great appetite, zoo officials said yesterday in their daily update on the cub’s condition. When feeding time comes, staff first wipe the cub’s mouth and touch its mouth with the nipple of a baby bottle. The cub, which cannot yet see, then starts greedily sucking the milk from the bottle, zoo official Chang Chi-hua (張起華) said. The cub’s hearty appetite is a sign of good health, Chang added. It now weighs 481.6g, more than double the 183.4g it weighed at birth on July 6.
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