HEALTH
Centenarian OK after surgery
A 106-year-old man was released from Miaoli General Hospital yesterday after a successful appendectomy, making him the oldest patient to have undergone the operation at the hospital. The hospital said the patient, surnamed Peng (彭), suffered constipation and a fever when he checked into the hospital in Miaoli County, where he was diagnosed with acute appendicitis. The risks of the surgery were high because of his advanced age, but the condition could have lead to life-endangering sepsis if untreated, the hospital said. Appendicitis is extremely rare in someone of Peng’s age. It usually occurs in people aged 10 to 50 and is not commonly seen after the age of 60, said Cheng Chih-yuan (鄭智元), the hospital’s head of general surgery. Upon his discharge, the hospital presented Peng with a red envelope containing a cash gift as congratulations.
HEALTH
NHIA system tracks user data
A system unveiled by the National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) can compile information for patients on the medical care they have received over the past year, helping them keep track of their prescriptions and illnesses. Under the “health deposit system,” people with a citizen’s digital certificate can obtain a list of the medications given to them over the past year, the agency said. It added that the system also lists the dates of the patient’s hospital visits, the names of the hospitals visited, the nature of treatment received, medicines prescribed and the special materials used. Acknowledging potential information protection concerns, the agency said the health deposit system that was launched on a trial basis in September has taken into consideration online convenience and privacy protection.
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