The Sunshine Social Welfare Foundation and Nicaragua’s APROQUEN yesterday said a cooperative project they have run over the past seven years has trained more than 20 burn rehabilitation specialists and has helped tens of thousands of burned children across Latin America.
The foundation, established in 1981, provides an extensive range of direct services — physical, psychological and social rehabilitation — for burn survivors and people with facial disfigurement, helping them to improve their quality of life, build confidence to participate in social activities and enjoy equal rights.
With the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the foundation in 2011 began working with APROQUEN — a Nicaraguan nonprofit organization that provides free comprehensive and holistic care to children who have sustained burns and to people with cleft lip and palate — and launched a training program for burn rehabilitation therapists in Latin America.
Photo courtesy of the Sunshine Social Welfare Foundation
At a presentation in Taipei yesterday, foundation chairwoman Ma Hae-shya (馬海霞) said the groups have trained more than 20 rehabilitation specialists, including physical therapists and skilled pressure garment tailors, and have helped tens of thousands of children through the program.
More than 7 million children in Latin America sustain burns every year, and without proper treatment and rehabilitation, many are left with lifelong injuries and cannot return to a normal life, so it is a serious matter that should be addressed, Nicaraguan Ambassador to Taiwan William Manuel Tapia Aleman said.
Through the program, both organizations have fostered the training of professional burn rehabilitation therapists in Latin America, he said, adding that APROQUEN has accomplished its slogan of “turning tears into smiles.”
The foundation said that when it teamed up with APROQUEN in 2011, it discovered the nonprofit’s need to learn the technical skills of sewing improved custom pressure garments for burn survivors and rehabilitation of hand burn injuries, so skills training and knowledge-based analytical thinking courses were provided to local specialists.
Over the 27 years since the nonprofit’s establishment, it has provided more than 557,000 direct, free medical services, including 36,206 surgeries and more than 270,000 physical therapy sessions, APROQUEN founder and president Vivian Pellas said.
Taiwan is like a respectful little giant, because although it is a small nation, it has always been consistent and glad to share its technology and knowledge with developing countries like Nicaragua, she said.
The improvement of pressure garments and assistive devices has allowed burn survivors to undergo fewer surgeries and has significantly changed their quality of life, Pellas said.
She expressed gratitude to the ministry and the foundation for accompanying burned children and their families through the painful process of recovery.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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