While the life expectancy of Taiwanese newborns in 2018 reached 80.69 years, the number of years people spent in poor health hit a record high at 8.41 years, Ministry of Health and Welfare statistics showed on Saturday.
Healthy life expectancy is calculated by a person’s life expectancy minus the time they spend in ill health, such as the loss of mobility, disabilities and chronic disease, based on medical records and calculations about the years they live with disabilities.
The number of years that Taiwanese spend in poor health is increasing slowly, but steadily, rising by 0.46 years, or five-and-a-half months, between 2012 and 2018, Department of Statistics Lee Chiu-yen (李秋嬿) said.
Photo: Lin Hui-chin, Taipei Times
The trend corresponds to the phenomenon of Taiwan becoming a superannuated society, said Chiou Hung-yih (邱弘毅), a professor of public health at Taipei Medical University.
It also highlights the dual problem of people generally having an “irresponsible” attitude toward their health and the authorities not allocating enough funds under the National Health Insurance (NHI) system for education about maintaining good health, Chiou said.
The NHI system emphasizes treatment and is neglecting public health at large, he said.
Some people do not take their medicine on time and develop a protracted period of poor health, while others started an unhealthy lifestyle early on, he added.
Physicians only focus on treating patients and do not educate them about their health, as doing so would not bring them extra subsidies under the NHI system, he said.
That NHI premiums have not risen has also led many people to take treatment for granted and ignore what they can do for themselves to stay healthy, he said.
Chen Ying-jen (陳英仁), a geriatric specialist at Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, said the nation’s universal healthcare and quality caregivers means that people are living longer in poor health.
There is also a problem with with how Taiwanese view death, as many people would rather their family members live on life support than die, Chen said.
Taiwanese need more education about quality of life and how to deal with situations when all the medication and treatment available have failed, as well as the prospect of having to go into hospice care, he said.
Statistics showed that the number of years people lived in poor health dipped in 2016, which the ministry attributed to a major cold front that aggravated cardiovascular and lung problems and led to an increase in deaths, adding that pneumonia was the third-most common cause of death that year, and life expectancy was reduced by 0.2 years.
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
COUNTERING HOSTILITY: The draft bill would require the US to increase diplomatic pressure on China and would impose sanctions on those who sabotage undersea cable networks US lawmakers on Thursday introduced a bipartisan bill to bolster the resilience of Taiwan’s submarine cables to counter China’s hostile activities. The proposal, titled the critical undersea infrastructure resilience initiative act, was cosponsored by Republican representatives Mike Lawler and Greg Stanton, and Democratic Representative Dave Min. US Senators John Curtis and Jacky Rosen also introduced a companion bill in the US Senate, which has passed markup at the chamber’s Committee on Foreign Relations. The House’s version of the bill would prioritize the deployment of sensors to detect disruptions or potential sabotage in real-time and enhance early warning capabilities through global intelligence sharing frameworks,
INTENSIFYING THREATS: Beijing’s tactics include massive attacks on the government service network, aircraft and naval vessel incursions and damaging undersea cables China is prepared to interfere in November’s nine-in-one local elections by launching massive attacks on the Taiwanese government’s service network (GSN), a report published by the National Security Bureau showed. The report was submitted to the Legislative Yuan ahead of the bureau’s scheduled briefing at the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The national security team has identified about 13,000 suspicious Internet accounts and 860,000 disputed messages, the bureau said of China’s cognitive warfare against Taiwan. The disputed messages focus on major foreign affairs, national defense and economic issues, which were produced using generative artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed through Chinese
RSS