The lack of infection control awareness in long-term care facilities has resulted in an infection rate of 5 percent to 10 percent, or an average of 3.5 times per nursing home resident, with urinary tract infection being the most common infection in the facilities, according to Infection Control Society of Taiwan chairman Lee Chun-ming (李聰明).
Government data from last year showed that people aged 65 or older make up 11.26 percent of the total population.
Accompanying this aging population is the end of traditional large families that live together, and the two social phenomena have engendered the need for more long-term care and better welfare policies. The prevention and control of the transmission of multi-antibiotic resistant bacteria in long-term care facilities should therefore be one of the nation’s top priorities, Lee said.
Hospital and nursing home residents use a variety of medication for physiological impairments, functional disabilities and chronic diseases, and because they frequently move between facilities and hospitals, the chance of spreading and getting infected with communicable diseases is increasing, Lee said.
He added that what will also increase is the length of their hospital stay, medical costs and death rates.
Lee’s research team found that every long-term care facility resident is infected on average 3.5 times during the course of their stay, with in-facility urinary tract infection accounting for 47 percent of the total infections and respiratory tract infection for 32 percent.
To control or eradicate drug-resistant bacteria, Lee said, necessary steps include the introduction of catheter-associated urinary tract infection care, antibiotic management and hospital epidemiology.
He added that providing accreditation and training programs for long-term care providers to become infection control practitioners is also important.
As a large percentage of antibiotic use is unnecessary — 20 to 50 percent of antibiotics taken by humans and 40 to 80 percent by animals — Lee said all relevant authorities, including the Council of Agriculture, should take on more responsibility in the fight against infection and drug reisistant bacteria, along with medical and long-term care facilities, to face the challenge.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods