The Department of Health (DOH) will ask hospitals and medical institutions that provide substitution therapy to narcotic addicts to watch out for drug-peddling activities near their facilities, a department official said on Monday.
Chou Chih-hao (周志浩), deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control, was responding to reports by the Chinese-language China Times that 50 hospitals and medical institutions around the nation in which the department offers methadone have become favorite spots for drug dealers to peddle their products, knowing that they can easily find a large number of drug addicts there.
The reports also said some patients take heroin in the hospital right after taking methadone.
Chou said that methadone is a progressive substitution for drugs such as heroin that allows addicts to cut their dependence and eventually give up the drug.
During the process, addicts do not have to buy expensive heroin, which eases their financial burden and helps reduce drug-related crime, he said.
He noted that since the DOH started offering methadone therapy in August 2005, the number of drug addicts involved in the program has increased to more than 6,500 from the original 1,100.
In addition, patients drink methadone, instead of taking it intravenously, which lessens the frequency of sharing needles and spreading AIDS, he said.
Statistics show that after the program was put into practice, new cases of AIDS reported were cut by 40 percent, he said.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS