With the number of people aged 65 and older growing at a rate of 5 percent and having seen a rapid increase of more than 204 centenarians in the past three years, Taipei is the most rapidly aging municipality in terms of population, according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
According to the most recent census conducted by the ministry of the elderly, 14 percent of the entire population is to be comprised of elderly people as early as 2018, with Taipei already having 14.08 percent of its total residents comprised of people aged 65 and older.
The Department of Civil Affairs had launched its own census to help the Taipei City Government decide how to distribute its subsidies and how to improve centenarians’ daily lives.
The department said that more than 80 percent of known centenarians live with family members, though there are still 122 who live alone or elsewhere.
Taipei Department of Civil Affairs Commissioner Lan Shih-tsung (藍世聰) said that with improved living standards and medical care, increasing numbers of people are living longer.
The city has 580 centenarians, up from 376 in September 2012, Lan said, adding that, in three years, the city has seen a 54.3 percent increase in centenarians.
Amongst the 580 centenarians, 276 are men and 52.4 percent, or 304, are female, Lan said, adding that 19.7 percent, or 114, of recorded centenarians live in Daan District (大安), 60 live in Shihlin District (士林), 57 live in Xinyi District (信義) and 13 live in Nangang District (南港).
The oldest centenarian in Taipei is the 113-year-old Yeh Yang Mei-fen (葉楊美芬), who last month took a trip to the US by herself to visit her great-grandchild.
When asked what her secret was to living so long, Yeh Yang said to keep happy and to avoid eating foot that has been stored overnight.
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