The Health Promotion Administration and health advocacy groups yesterday said that about 90 percent of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) cases are caused by cigarette smoking, and even non-smokers can develop the condition from long-term exposure to secondhand smoke.
On the eve of the 14th Annual World COPD Day, the health administration held an event with the Taiwan Society of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and the anti-smoking John Tung Foundation, to raise public awareness about COPD — a term covering long-term lung conditions characterized by obstruction of the airways — such as chronic bronchitis and emphysema — which are often irreversible.
Administration Director Wang Ying-wei (王英偉) said that six of the 10 leading causes of death in Taiwan are associated with cigarette smoking, and the biggest cause of COPD, which kills on average one person every 10 seconds worldwide.
Photo: Lin Yen-tung, Taipei Times
More than 5,000 people die from COPD every year in Taiwan, he said, adding that quitting smoking and avoiding exposure to secondhand smoke are the most effective ways to prevent the disease.
A nonsmoking woman in her 50s reported sudden onset of shortness of breath and was diagnosed with serious emphysema at a hospital emergency room, Taiwan Society of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine director Yu Chung-jen (余忠仁) said.
It turned out that her father, husband and son all smoked cigarettes and she had been inhaling their smoke, Yu said.
“Because the normal functioning of the lungs is obstructed, patients often suffer from coughing, shortness of breath, chest tightness, wheezing and excess mucus in the lungs,” Yu said, adding that studies have suggested that approximately 90 percent of COPD cases are caused by cigarette- smoking, but about 40 percent of patients continue to smoke after their diagnoses.
Changhua Christian Hospital physician Lin Ching-hsiung (林慶雄) said the symptoms of COPD often progress slowly with age and can be difficult to detect, with up to 90 percent of early-stage patients not knowing that they are suffering from the disease, so smokers aged 40 or above, or people with a family history of the disease should undergo regular health examinations.
Sun Yue (孫越), a celebrity who is a volunteer anti-smoking advocate at the foundation, said he smoked for 38 years before he quit 30 years ago, but he still has to be hospitalized several times per year due to repeated lung infections caused by COPD.
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