The Greater Kaohsiung City Government on Tuesday reported four more deaths from dengue fever, bringing the virus’ toll to 13 this year and prompting the Control Yuan to demand an explanation from health and environmental authorities.
The southern municipality’s health bureau said three of the five patients admitted to hospitals for dengue hemorrhagic fever — a more serious manifestation of the disease that afflicts a small percentage of cases — between Friday last week and Monday had died, just days after another death was confirmed on Nov. 5.
All of the deceased were between 64 and 79 years old and had histories of high blood pressure, heart disease, or rheumatoid or metabolic arthritis, the bureau said.
As of Monday, the Kaohsiung government had reported 10,101 indigenous cases of dengue. Of the 80 who developed severe dengue hemorrhagic fever, 61 have recovered, six are still in the hospital and 13 have died.
The bureau said the local administration has tried all available means to stamp out the breeding of mosquitoes — which carry the virus — including by using sea water to flush the municipality’s drainage system in a bid to kill the insect’s larvae.
The bureau reported that the sea water tactic met with initial success, saying that of 200 larvae flushed with seawater only two had survived, indicating a rate of “99 percent effectiveness [that] is within our expectations.”
Yet the seemingly effective solution has come a bit too late for the nation’s watchdog, as two Control Yuan members on Tuesday began investigating whether health and environmental authorities at national and local levels have been remiss in their responses to the outbreak.
In a press release, the Control Yuan said members Jane Chiang (江綺雯) and Teresa Yin (尹祚芊) will look into why the number of dengue fever cases this year has been 9.2 times higher than that seen four years ago.
The Control Yuan in 2011 reprimanded the Ministry of Health and Welfare (then the Department of Health) for failing to keep the public safe from dengue.
Even so, 10,600 cases of dengue were reported nationally this year, with Kaohsiung alone accounting for 95 percent —10,101 cases — as of Monday, the statement 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
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