Although cancer is no longer an incurable disease, a large proportion of suspected cancer patients in the nation remain reluctant to seek a diagnosis, the Taipei City Government’s Department of Health said yesterday.
The department’s health promotion division head, Lin Li-ju (林莉茹), said of the 277,000 people who underwent the health department’s free cancer screenings between January and last month, 1,471 were found to have precancerous lesions and 456 were diagnosed with cancers.
“While some are willing to come face-to-face with cancer, as many as 1,666, or 41.2 percent, of people who tested positive in fecal occult blood testing [FOBT] during that period never came back for a diagnostic test,” Lin said.
In addition, about 688 (32.4 percent) and 730 (21.3 percent) of Taipei citizens thought to have oral and breast cancer respectively due to their test results also have yet to get a diagnosis, Lin said.
“Some of these people refused to undergo further tests — such as colonoscopies or breast ultrasounds — to confirm the diagnosis, because they were either too scared to find out whether they really had the diseases, or too confident in their health,” Lin said.
Local health departments offer women with a family history of breast cancer aged 40 to 44 and all women aged 45 to 69 a mammography every two years. Women aged 30 or above are offered one free Pap smear per year; people between 50 and 74 may be screened for colon cancer at two-year intervals, and betel-nut chewers and smokers aged 30 and above, as well as Aboriginal betel-nut users over 18, are encouraged to be screened for oral cancer once every two years.
A 67-year-old man surnamed Wang (王) said he had exercised regularly and kept routine bowel movements for the previous 25 years before he received a positive FOBT test four years ago.
“I refused to believe the result, so I scheduled a colonoscopy shortly afterward. To my astonishment, they did find a large tumor in my rectum and diagnosed me with late, stage-three colorectal cancer,” Wang said, adding that he did not have a family history of cancer or any symptoms before the diagnosis.
Wang aggressively sought treatment, had the tumor removed and had 12 chemotherapy sessions.
He is in remission and serves as a volunteer counselor at the Hope Foundation for Cancer Care.
“You may leave your destiny in God’s hands, but you must be in control of your decisions,” Wang 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:
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
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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