Authorities have managed to contain the rabies epidemic to the wild Formosan ferret-badger population in mountainous regions, almost a year after the deadly disease was confirmed in the nation, the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine said.
The first rabies case in more than half a century was confirmed on July 16 last year, ending the nation’s 52-year rabies-free status, the bureau said.
Among the 3,844 suspected infections that the bureau inspected through the end of last month, only 379 Formosan ferret-badgers, one Asian house shrew and one dog bitten by a ferret-badger were confirmed to have been infected with rabies.
The infected animals came from 62 villages and townships in nine cities and counties across the nation.
However, the spread of the disease has apparently been limited by the bureau’s efforts to set up stations in high-risk areas to vaccinate cats and dogs, along with a campaign to get people in cities to bring their pets to clinics for vaccination.
The bureau said that the vaccination rate among cats and dogs in mountain villages was 94 percent, while the rate in the nine cities and counties where the infected ferret-badgers were found was 78 percent.
The average pet vaccination rate nationwide was lower, at 68 percent, but the bureau vowed to continue to push for vaccinations, with a target of more than 70 percent.
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
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
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