HEALTH
MERS warning reiterated
Travelers to the Middle East should be on the alert as the number of reported cases of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) has been escalating in that region, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. The disease is concentrated mainly in the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh, where about 100 cases had been reported as of late last month, the CDC said. The risk of contracting MERS might increase due to a surge of visitors for hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca that is to take place from Sept. 20 to Sept. 25, attracting more than 3 million pilgrims from around the world, the CDC said. People visiting Saudi Arabia and other MERS hotspots, including the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Iran, Oman and Qatar, should exercise caution, the CDC said. According to the WHO, 1,461 confirmed cases of MERS, including 514 deaths, were reported in 26 nations from September 2012 to Monday.
HEALTH
Tainan dengue cases on rise
The Tainan City Government on Tuesday reported more than 2,000 dengue fever cases. With 178 new cases, Tainan has now reached a total of 2,152 cases since the beginning of summer. Tainan’s Northern District (北區) reported the most dengue fever cases in the region with 1,032. Dengue fever has claimed the lives of four people so far this year — all in Tainan. All four were elderly people over the age of 70, who suffered from other chronic illnesses, the city government said. The CDC on Tuesday said in a weekly report that most people in Tainan had been infected in the region, but added that there have been some “imported infections,” with patients contracting the disease on visits to Southeast Asian nations.
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