The Evolution of Taiwan Pediatrics Association (ETPA) yesterday urged parental vigilance after recent reports of several deadly incidents involving children.
“The Health Promotion Administration’s statistics show that the leading cause of death among Taiwanese children from age one to age 14 is accidents, accounting for 23.8 percent of total deaths in the age group. They are mainly traffic accidents, drownings and accidental falls,” association deputy secretary-general Yeung Chun-yan (楊俊仁) told a children’s health forum held in Taipei.
Yeung said the percentage of people killed in accidents is higher among young people aged 15 to 24 — 49.2 percent.
A study by the UN children’s fund — UNICEF — in collaboration with the Alliance for Safe Children found accidents to be a major cause of death in children aged 17 or less in Asian nations, Yeung said.
Taiwanese Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion Association director-general Pai Lu (白璐) said a Ministry of Health and Welfare study found that the majority of accidents involving children occur at home.
“It also found that about 80 percent of children in the nation have been left alone, with more than 10 percent having the experience more than four days a week,” Pai said.
Pai said a lack of awareness among parents played a major role in the large number of child-involved accidents, referring a news report on Tuesday in which a three-year-old Miaoli County girl drowned after her mother momentarily left her alone in a bathtub.
She also cited an accident on Sunday in which a six-year-old Kaohsiung boy died after falling from the fourth-floor balcony of his home after both parents left the apartment before his grandfather arrived to babysit him.
“The government is strongly urged to include parenting and child safety in school curricula, to better prepare young adults for parenthood,” Pai said.
Huang Ching-feng (黃清?), director of the Pediatric Gastroenterology Division of Tri-Service General Hospital’s pediatric department, said the number of drownings surges by 89 percent on average during summer, outpacing other accidents.
“About 90 percent of drownings that involve young children occur without parental supervision, with some happening when caregivers leave the bathroom for just five minutes,” Huang said.
Huang said other accidents that also increase in the summer are cycling injuries (by 45 percent), accidental falls (21 percent) and traffic accidents (20 percent).
ETPA director-general Huang Jing-long (黃璟隆) urged parents to refrain from putting anything around a child’s neck to avoid possible suffocations, avoid using baby walkers — which have long been associated with accidental falls — and never leave a toddler alone.
“They are also advised to keep children away from heat sources, such as kitchen stoves, light sockets and deep water. Proper storage of small objects, medicines and cleaning agents is also vital in keeping children safe,” Huang said.
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