HEALTH
Taiwanese named to IUHPE
A top Ministry of Health and Welfare official has been named a global vice president of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE), a nomination that she said represents Taiwan’s “eventual entry into the global village of health promotion.” It also indicates that Taiwan is playing an ever more important international role, Health Promotion Administration Director-General Chiou Shu-ti (邱淑媞) said. She will officially become one of the IUHPE’s 11 global vice presidents during the organization’s triennial conference to be held in Bangkok later this month. Chiou, 50, served as chief of the Taipei City Government’s health department from 2002 to 2003 and is known for her role in helping to contain the outbreak of SARS in the city in the spring of 2003. She also chairs the International Health Promoting Hospitals Network under the WHO.
HEALTH
Farm visit sickens tourists
A group of local tourists suffered food-poisoning symptoms on Sunday afternoon, a day after they had eaten at a leisure farm in Yilan County. About 32 people who had visited Shangrila Leisure Farming sought medical treatment at 3pm on Sunday, suffering from diarrhea and vomiting, Yilan County’s Public Health Bureau said. Most of the victims have now left the hospital. The bureau said it has sent the patients’ blood and stool samples to the health ministry for further testing and has given the farm a deadline to improve its food processing method. Chang Ching-lai (張清來), the person in charge of Shangrila Leisure Farming, visited the hospital on Sunday to see the victims, saying he would pay for their medical treatment and would cooperate with the bureau’s investigation.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
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POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the