A radio program promoting screening tests for liver disease most likely saved the life of a 52-year-old man from New Taipei City, who took the test after listening to the program and discovered he had a malignant liver tumor, which was then successfully treated.
“The man, named Chang Jung-feng (張榮豐), was born to a hepatitis B carrier father and learned that he was also a carrier at the age of 20,” New Taipei City Department of Public Health Commissioner Lin Chi-hung (林奇宏) said yesterday.
Lin said Chang had been oblivious of his condition for decades until March last year, when he accidentally tuned in to a radio station that was airing a program hosted by National Taiwan University Hospital honorary professor Sheu Jin-chuan (許金川), who has dedicated his life to liver disease prevention.
Sheu had been promoting a free blood-testing program launched by the Liver Disease Prevention and Treatment Research Foundation, which prompted Chang to get tested, Lin said.
“Chang subsequently underwent an abdominal ultrasonography after his alpha-fetoprotein [AFP] level — which is considered a liver tumor indicator — was found to be abnormally high, at 780 nanograms per milliliter [ng/ml], compared with the normal level of less than 10ng/ml,” Lin said.
The ultrasound found a malignant tumor measuring 2.6cm in Chang’s liver.
Since the tumor was detected early, the 52-year-old is in recovery after being treated with radiofrequency ablation.
Lin said that in 2013, about 1,600 New Taipei City residents died from liver diseases and 1,024 from liver cancer, which was the second-most common cause of cancer-related deaths in the city during that year.
“Hepatitis B and C are closely related to liver cancer. More than 80 percent of the country’s liver cancer patients are also hepatitis B or C carriers, who are 10 times and 35 times more prone to developing liver cancer than non-carriers respectively,” Lin said.
Lin urged New Taipei City residents aged 29 and older to join the department’s hepatitis and liver cancer screening program, which is offering free tests at Hsing Wu University of Science and Technology in the city’s Linkou District (林口) from 1pm to 4pm on Saturday.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS