A woman from northern Taiwan has tested positive for typhoid fever after returning from a trip to India, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, urging the public to avoid eating raw food, salads, peeled fruits or iced beverages when traveling to areas where the disease is spreading.
The woman last month went on a business trip to New Delhi, where she ate raw seafood and subsequently began vomiting and had diarrhea and a high fever, but did not seek medical attention, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Kuo Hung-wei (郭宏偉) said.
She sought treatment at an emergency room after returning to Taiwan, was hospitalized on April 7 and was diagnosed with typhoid on Friday last week, he said.
A sample has been taken for examination from a friend of the woman, who accompanied her to India and experienced similar symptoms, he added.
Typhoid fever is a gastrointestinal infection with an incubation period of between eight and 14 days that can be contracted by consuming raw or undercooked food, or food or water contaminated by the feces or urine of carriers, CDC physician Su Chia-ping (蘇家彬) said.
Symptoms of typhoid fever include fever, headaches, abdominal pain, diarrhea, coughing and sweating, Su said, adding that people who often travel to areas where the disease is spreading, such as South or Southeast Asian countries, should consider getting vaccinated against the disease two weeks before traveling.
To prevent contracting typhoid fever, visitors to such areas are advised to avoid consuming raw food, salads, peeled fruit or iced beverages, and to drink bottled water or water that has been boiled, the agency said.
Separately, the CDC late yesterday said that DNA sequencing analysis has confirmed two cases of measles involving a Tigerair Taiwan flight attendant and pilot that were reported over the weekend.
They are the latest in a cluster of cases traced to a Taiwanese man, who was infected during a trip to Thailand last month and diagnosed with the disease after taking a Tigerair flight to Okinawa, Japan, earlier this month, resulting in a total of eight confirmed measles cases in Taiwan, the agency said.
An outbreak of measles is ongoing in Okinawa, with 56 confirmed cases as of Monday, Su said, adding that Japanese media reports have associated the outbreak with the Taiwanese visitor.
People planning to travel to Okinawa can consult a travel medicine clinic on whether a measles, mumps and rubella vaccination is needed, he said, but added that the CDC advises against taking infants younger than one to Okinawa or places where measles is spreading.
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:
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