More than 65 out of every 100 Taipei residents that died last year were killed by chronic diseases, which constituted seven of the capital’s 10 leading causes of death in the same period, statistics released by the Taipei City Government’s Department of Health showed yesterday.
The data showed that a total of 16,953 people died in the city last year, an increase of 853 from 2013. The average age of death was 75, which was 3.2 years older than the national average in the same period.
The leading cause of death among Taipei residents was malignant tumors, claiming the lives of 28.9 percent of all recorded deaths in the city last year, the data showed, followed by heart disease at 14.7 percent, cerebrovascular diseases at 7.1 percent, pneumonia at 6.3 percent and diabetes at 5 percent.
Rounding out the top 10 leading causes of death were chronic lower respiratory illnesses (3.9 percent); nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis (3.3 percent); health problems related to high blood pressure (2.7 percent); accidents (2.7 percent) and sepsis (2.6 percent).
Compared with the 2013 statistics, an increase was observed in the age-standardized fatality rates for six of the diseases: pneumonia with a 17.9 percent increase; heart disease (16.1 percent); nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis (8.8 percent); accidents (6.7 percent); chronic lower respiratory illnesses (6.2 percent); and cerebrovascular diseases (0.4 percent).
Meanwhile, four of the illnesses saw a dip in their age-standardized death rates, with high blood pressure-related illnesses leading the declines with 13.8 percent, followed by sepsis (7.3 percent), diabetes (3.6 percent) and cancer (3.1 percent), the data indicated.
The top three causes of death for both men and women in the city were cancer, heart disease and cerebrovascular illnesses, the statistics showed.
The department advised the public to consume a balanced diet and, exercising for at least 150 minutes per week, refraining from smoking and having regular health check-ups.
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