The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday urged parents whose children developed an abscess after receiving a vaccine for tuberculosis to take them back to the clinic or hospital where the injection was administered for assessment and treatment.
CDC physician Huang Hsin-yi (黃馨頤) said it is common for a sore or blister to form after being injected with the Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine, but this usually heals within two to three months after vaccination.
However, there are a few cases in which the swelling continues, expands or develops into a local abscess, Huang said.
“On average, there are about 10 reported cases of local abscesses developing after receiving a BCG vaccination each year. So far, we have received 14 reports of abscesses on infants born last year,” CDC Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said, adding that the number could reach 20 if infants born last year but who have not yet received the vaccine are added in.
He said the agency recently held a specialists’ meeting to discuss the situation and about a few cases of swelling or abscess that were treated by surgical removal or drainage, he said.
“We do not suggest getting a surgical treatment,” he said.
“The agency suggests that parents take their children back to the clinic or hospital where they received the BCG vaccine for assessment and treatment,” Huang said.
The agency has also informed doctors about the treatment methods recommended by specialists, she added.
“Redness, swelling or suppuration where the shot was given are considered normal immune responses,” Lo said.
However, when the immune system is over-responsive to the vaccine, the local abscess can be bigger and take longer to heal, he said.
Babies develop better immunity as they grow, so they are more likely to develop a local abscess if they get vaccinated at an older age, he said.
He added that the increase in the number of cases last year might be due to a policy change, with the CDC recommending that BGC vaccination be postponed to when babies are between five and eight months old.
However, Lo said statistics showed that the cases of regional lymphadenitis following BCG vaccination have dropped from an average of 10 to 15 cases per year to one reported case so far in babies born last year.
“Usually an abscess can heal on its own, or improve with the help of oral medication or needle aspiration for abscess drainage. As such, surgical treatment that will cause a wound, delay recovery or increase risk of infection is not recommended,” he added.
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