A severe shortage of hospice services in hospitals and health centers across the nation could have a severe impact on the elderly and terminally ill patients, the Taiwan Healthcare Reform Foundation said yesterday.
“Nearly 86 percent of respondents to a survey conducted last month by the foundation said they would prefer painless hospice care at home or in local communities, rather than being kept alive by a ventilator. However, whether that hope will be dashed may hinge entirely on where they live,” foundation chairwoman Liu Mei-chun (劉梅君) told a news conference in Taipei.
Liu said that while it is common knowledge that the nation is rapidly becoming a “super-aged society,” in an evaluation of the availability, accessibility and policy of hospice care services, just two out of 19 cities and counties scored more than 41 out of 50 points — the minimum requirement for a five-star rating by the foundation.
In addition to the two five-starred administrative regions, Greater Taoyuan and Yilan County, five regions earned four stars: Greater Taichung, Chiayi and Hsinchu cities, and Changhua and Hualien counties, Liu said.
“It is worth noting that Taipei, despite being equipped with relatively abundant end-stage palliative care resources, scored just 30 on the test and was given a three-star rating, as its relatively large elderly population of 360,000 people has resulted in a high demand for end-of-life care,” Liu said, adding that Yulin County was rated the lowest, because it was lacking in all aspects of palliative care.
Another pressing problem is the wide gap in hospice care resources between cities and counties, Liu said, citing statistics that showed each hospice care facility in Chiayi City is responsible for an average of 189 cancer patients, for example, compared with 977 per facility in Yunlin County and an average of 364 per facility nationwide.
“In addition, about eight hospice palliative care beds are available per 100,000 residents in Hualien County, while people living in Nantou County have no such facilities at all,” Liu said.
More troubling, Liu said, is that nine out of the nation’s 50 “sub-medical regions” — population centers within larger medical service areas — were found to be without palliative care, lacking hospice beds, community services or home care options, Liu said.
Three are in Taitung County, two in Pingtung County and one each in Miaoli, Nantou, Yulin and Hualien counties, she added.
Foundation deputy executive director Phoebe Chen (陳芙媺) said its researchers have determined the root causes of the problems, which include indifference from local government leadership and reluctance among hospitals to promote hospice care because it is less lucrative than other hospital services.
“So far, only the governments of Taoyuan, Changhua, New Taipei City and Nantou have endeavored to promote community-based palliative care, while others rely solely on the services provided by the National Health Insurance program and have done little to build a hospice care network,” Chen said.
Despite the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s oft-touted efforts in facilitating hospice care, Chen said that just three of the nation’s 27 ministry-affiliated hospitals have palliative care beds, which are also absent in established cancer-oriented medical institutions such as Taipei’s Shin Kong Wu Ho-Su Memorial Hospital and the Far Eastern Memorial Hospital in New Taipei City.
The foundation urged local governments and the ministry to prioritize the provision of palliative care.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods