The New Taipei City Government’s Public Health Department yesterday said that almost 90 percent of AIDS/HIV cases reported in the municipality stem from unprotected sex, including the infection of a 16-year-old high-school freshman, who is by far the city’s youngest patient.
According to department senior specialist Lee Chia-chi (李佳琪), as of last month, there were 6,406 people diagnosed with AIDS in New Taipei City. However, the number of new AIDS patients per year in the 15-to-24 age group has dropped for the first time in five years, from 171 in 2012 to 139 last year, Lee added.
“Unsafe sex is what led to HIV infection for more than 90 percent of people with AIDS aged between 15 and 24, while the number of people being infected from shared intravenous needle use fell to zero last year,” Lee said.
Lee said the 16-year-old, nicknamed A-chiang (阿強), was a smartphone user who had been meeting people online via an app.
“One day during the summer vacation before going to senior-high school, A-chiang had a sudden high fever. He turned to several doctors and took the medicines that they prescribed as scheduled, but the symptom did not abate,” Lee said.
Lee said only after A-chiang was rushed to an emergency care unit at a large hospital to treat his worsening condition was he diagnosed with AIDS.
Far Eastern Memorial Hospital AIDS case manager Lee Hsing-chuan (李幸娟) said the growing number of young people using social networking sites or so-called “speed-friending” applications in recent years has indirectly driven up the number of people in the 15-to-24 age group being diagnosed with the sexually transmitted disease.
In efforts to promote HIV prevention among students, Lee said the department is adopting three measures: Introducing trained AIDS prevention instructors to campuses; setting up a Facebook page to spread knowledge of protection from AIDS to young people; and joining forces with civil groups in providing confidential AIDS screening services.
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