A decision on whether a new type of oral hepatitis C drug will be covered by the National Health Insurance (NHI) system is to be made next week, NHI Administration (NHIA) Director-General Lee Po-chang (李伯璋) said.
With government estimates placing the number of people with chronic hepatitis C at about 550,000, Minister of Health and Welfare Lin Tzou-yien (林奏延) in late July said that the ministry would try to negotiate a cheaper price for the new drug and allow it to be covered by the National Health Insurance next year.
Lee told a public hearing on Wednesday that given the large numbers of people with hepatitis B, hepatitis C or needing regular dialysis, treatment of these diseases must be improved, or the government would be expending significant amount of resources to little effect, which would be a heavy burden on the insurance system.
Some NHI committee members have suggested that instead of covering the new drug, it should be listed as a government expenditure so that the high cost of the new drug does not crowd out funding for other diseases, he said.
Taiwan Association for the Study of the Liver director Chien Rong-nan (簡榮南) said that more than half of people with chronic hepatitis C — or about 280,000 people — do not know they have the disease, and only about 170,000 people are receiving treatment, so the government should enhance the nation’s hepatitis C program to include prevention, screening and effective treatment.
However, because the government’s budget for next year has already been planned, it would be too late to include the new drug as a government expense, Lee said.
The committee is to decide next week whether it should be covered by the NHI system, he said.
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