Newly sworn-in Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) yesterday said he would continue to carry out current policies and avoid drastic personnel changes, reiterating that the healthcare industry is part of the service industry, as health practitioners are dedicated to serve humanity.
Chen made the remarks in a meeting with the media shortly after a morning inauguration ceremony at the Ministry of Health and Welfare in Taipei.
During the ceremony, former minister of health and welfare Lin Tzou-yien (林奏延) said he was grateful that President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and Premier Lin Chuan (林全) had given him the opportunity to work with the ministry’s team, saying that it had been the biggest honor of his life.
“Chen was a former deputy minister of the [former] Department of Health and drafted the white paper for the Tsai administration’s medical policies, so he is very familiar with policies and operations,” Lin Tzou-yien said. “He is also skilled at cross-discipline communication and a very appropriate person for the job.”
Lin Tzou-yien said that over the past four months he had focused on managing progress of the “long-term care services program 2.0,” but added that there remain tasks that Chen must complete, including the establishment of the program’s information system, as well as changes to the National Health Insurance and drug addiction prevention programs.
Integration between the social welfare and healthcare sectors is critical to the success of the long-term care program, he said, urging people in related agencies to put aside departmental selfishness and cooperate to create a ministry.
Asked by reporters if he would carry out Lin Tzou-yien’s plan to establish a specialized department to execute long-term care policies, Chen said that as his basic plan is to “continue policies, but strive for personnel stability,” he would prefer to operate in the existing organizational framework for now.
Regarding an earlier remark about the healthcare industry being a part of the services industry, which triggered criticism from medical professionals, Chen quoted the Declaration of Geneva (commonly known as the Physician’s Oath): “I solemnly pledge to consecrate my life to the service of humanity” and said that medical fees are listed as “healthcare and social work services” in the government’s occupational classification.
Minister of Labor Lin Mei-chu (林美珠), Council of Agriculture Minister Lin Tsung-hsien (林聰賢) and Minister of Science and Technology Chen Liang-gee (陳良基) were also sworn in at the event.
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
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
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