The Taipei Department of Health is crediting its stringent ban on smoking in all indoor public spaces and some outdoor venues, along with the growing awareness of the health risks of tobacco use, for a drop of 130,000 in the number of city residents who smoke.
“According to Ministry of Health and Welfare statistics, Taipei’s smoking prevalence among adults aged 18 and above has dropped from 18.9 percent in 2008 to 12.9 percent last year, the lowest among major cities and counties nationwide,” Health Promotion Division chief Lin Li-ju (林莉茹) said.
Smoking is prohibited at 237 outdoor public areas, including the sidewalks around 24 schools, the areas near 13 exclusive bus lanes, 155 bus stops and parts of the Ningxia Night Market (寧夏夜市) in the Datong District (大同), Lin said, making it inconvenient to light up.
Statistics show that only five out of every 100 men who rely solely on willpower to quit smoking succeed, compared with the 32.5 percent of Taipei residents who used the second-generation Smoking Cessation Program for help quitting.
The program was implemented in March 2012, but as of Jan. 12 it offers smoking cessation drugs that are fully covered by the National Health Insurance system in 3,049 hospitals, clinics and community pharmacies nationwide.
Smokers using the service are only required to pay a medical registration fee ranging from NT$50 to NT$250 per visit, and pay just 20 percent of the cost of medication, with a cap of NT$200 per prescription. Previously, they had to pay all the costs beyond the maximum weekly subsidy of NT$250.
“In an effort to boost people’s efforts to kick the habit ahead of the Lunar New Year, the department instituted a trial measure that exempts smokers using the service at the city’s 48 hospitals and clinics by the end of this month from paying registration fees,” Lin said.
Wu Hsein-lin (吳憲林), a doctor who works in Taiwan Adventist Hospital’s Stop Smoking Unit, said cigarette smoke contains more than 7,000 chemicals.
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