The Taiwanese Society for Reproductive Medicine (TSRM) last week called on the government to establish a special fund to assist the growing number of people seeking artificial insemination treatment.
About 10,000 people per year undergo treatment for infertility, which is a major cause of the nation’s aging crisis, the TSRM said.
About 6,000 people receive artificial insemination treatment yearly, but that number might rise if the government assists with the costs of the procedure, the TSRM said.
Statistics from the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) show growing interest in artificial insemination, with 6,857 people receiving treatment in 2014, up from 5,988 people in 2013 and 5,825 people in 2012.
However, many people abandon treatment halfway due to the prohibitively high costs of the procedure, the TSRM said.
A couple is usually considered infertile when they fail to get pregnant after a year of not using contraception, and treatments include in vitro fertilization (IVF) and embryo transfer, gamete intrafallopian transfer and artificial insemination by donor, TSRM deputy secretary-general Ho Hsin-i (何信頤) said.
Ho said both men and women can be the cause of infertility, and the treatment method used is determined by the cause.
Treatment costs for IVF are about NT$20,000 (US$662) while those for other methods are about NT$150,000, and if sperm donations are needed, the costs go up by an additional NT$100,000.
The need for multiple treatments for some patients makes the costs especially prohibitive for many people, Ho said.
In cases where the prospective mother lacks a uterus or has a uterus incapable of supporting childbirth, she must find a surrogate mother abroad and might face costs of more than NT$1 million, he said.
“If the government wants to increase childbirth, it needs to establish a special fund to assist couples with the cost of artificial insemination,” Ho said.
HPA director Wang Ying-wei (王英偉) said the administration would attend an upcoming Ministry of Health and Welfare conference on the aging population, where it would bring up the idea of a special fund for artificial insemination.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the