At the beginning of Pink October, or Breast Cancer Awareness Month, a health foundation urged women with breast cancer not to be afraid of getting medical treatment, adding that aerobic exercise can help the recovery process.
Lai Gi-ming (賴基銘), the Formosa Cancer Foundation chief executive and a physician at Taipei Municipal Wan-Fang Hospital’s Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology, said breast cancer has the highest incidence of all types of cancer for Taiwanese women.
Health Promotion Administration (HPA) statistics showed that 1,962 women died of breast cancer in 2013 — an average of about 5.3 women per day, the foundation said.
The average breast cancer diagnosis age is 53, and the age group with the highest incidence rate is between 45 and 54, while the second highest group is from 35 to 44, Lai said, adding that women aged between 35 and 44 accounted for 18 percent of all diagnoses, showing that breast cancer can also occur in younger women.
He said breast cancer should be treated as soon as possible, because figures collected between 2008 and 2012 showed the five-year survival rate of stage-zero to be 97 percent, 95.7 percent for stage-one, 89.1 percent for stage-two, 72.3 percent for stage-three, and 25.7 percent for stage-four.
The foundation said that all women aged between 45 and 69, and women with a family history of breast cancer who are older than 40, should get a mammogram at least every two years.
“Years of studies have shown that self-examination is not enough, because our hands are not sensitive enough,” Health Promotion Administration Director-General Chiou Shu-ti (邱淑媞) said, adding that the government provides women aged between 45 and 69 a free mammogram every two years.
In addition, according to a study by the US’ National Cancer Institute, regular exercise can improve both physical and mental health during treatment and post- treatment, Lai said, adding that he suggests patients get a minimum 150 minutes of aerobic exercise every week to assist with the recovery process.
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:
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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