The Centers for Diseases Control (CDC) on Tuesday said that starting next year it would provide free tuberculosis tests to people older than five years old who have come into contact with tuberculosis patients.
Tuberculosis remains the most serious communicable disease in the nation, causing more than 600 deaths each year — more than dengue fever or other communicable diseases, the CDC said.
Tuberculosis can have a long incubation period and become active when the infected person’s immune system is weakened, CDC physician Chan Pei-chun (詹珮君) said, adding that there are about 10,000 new cases of tuberculosis reported each year in Taiwan.
She said a study conducted by CDC physician Lee Pin-hui (李品慧) and National Taiwan University College of Public Health associate professor Lin Hsien-ho (林先和) analyzed health examination data from 116,900 people and discovered that individuals who suffer from diabetes have a greater risk — by about 60 percent — of contracting tuberculosis than people without diabetes.
Their study also found that among people with diabetes, those who fail to control their blood sugar level effectively — maintaining a fasting blood glucose greater than 130 milligrams per deciliter — have an even greater chance — a 100 percent increase — to contract tuberculosis, she said, while a properly controlled blood sugar level could reduce that risk by about 40 percent.
While there are about 1 million people with diabetes in the nation, studies have shown that more than 70 percent do not control their blood sugar level effectively, she said, adding that the CDC estimated that 9.3 percent of tuberculosis cases are caused by a failure to control blood sugar level.
Chan said the CDC would begin to provide the free tests — interferon-gamma release assays — to individuals older than five who have come into contact with tuberculosis patients to identify those with latent infections, which could help reduce the risk of the disease becoming active.
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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