HEALTH
Annual holiday flu cases fall
The number of people who sought emergency medical treatment for flu-like symptoms during the Lunar New Year holiday fell nearly 60 percent from the same period last year, mainly due to the government’s expanded vaccination campaign to combat influenza, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Thursday. During the six-day holiday, 24,450 people sought emergency treatment for flu-like symptoms, down from 56,358 last year, agency statistics showed. CDC Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said that in the latest vaccination campaign, launched in October last year, 6 million flu vaccines were provided free of charge to eligible individuals, up from 3 million in 2015, adding that significantly prevented the spread of the flu.
GOVERNMENT
Cabinet to upgrade center
The Cabinet on Thursday approved a draft bill to upgrade the Center for Drug Evaluation into a financially independent national organization, in a bid to create a more efficient system for the review of pharmaceuticals and medical devices. The new organization is to handle all such reviews nationwide, taking over the responsibilities of the nonprofit center and several other entities that deal with the evaluation of medical devices and drugs, the Cabinet said. It would also help streamline the process of obtaining licenses to sell medical devices and drugs, shortening the wait time by one to two months, Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Ho Chi-kung (何啟功) said. The new organization is to be financially independent, operating on funds obtained from evaluation fees, unlike the center, which relies on subsidies from the government, Ho said, adding that the upgrade would require an amendment to the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act (藥事法).
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