Although cancer is no longer an incurable disease, a large proportion of suspected cancer patients in the nation remain reluctant to seek a diagnosis, the Taipei City Government’s Department of Health said yesterday.
The department’s health promotion division head, Lin Li-ju (林莉茹), said of the 277,000 people who underwent the health department’s free cancer screenings between January and last month, 1,471 were found to have precancerous lesions and 456 were diagnosed with cancers.
“While some are willing to come face-to-face with cancer, as many as 1,666, or 41.2 percent, of people who tested positive in fecal occult blood testing [FOBT] during that period never came back for a diagnostic test,” Lin said.
In addition, about 688 (32.4 percent) and 730 (21.3 percent) of Taipei citizens thought to have oral and breast cancer respectively due to their test results also have yet to get a diagnosis, Lin said.
“Some of these people refused to undergo further tests — such as colonoscopies or breast ultrasounds — to confirm the diagnosis, because they were either too scared to find out whether they really had the diseases, or too confident in their health,” Lin said.
Local health departments offer women with a family history of breast cancer aged 40 to 44 and all women aged 45 to 69 a mammography every two years. Women aged 30 or above are offered one free Pap smear per year; people between 50 and 74 may be screened for colon cancer at two-year intervals, and betel-nut chewers and smokers aged 30 and above, as well as Aboriginal betel-nut users over 18, are encouraged to be screened for oral cancer once every two years.
A 67-year-old man surnamed Wang (王) said he had exercised regularly and kept routine bowel movements for the previous 25 years before he received a positive FOBT test four years ago.
“I refused to believe the result, so I scheduled a colonoscopy shortly afterward. To my astonishment, they did find a large tumor in my rectum and diagnosed me with late, stage-three colorectal cancer,” Wang said, adding that he did not have a family history of cancer or any symptoms before the diagnosis.
Wang aggressively sought treatment, had the tumor removed and had 12 chemotherapy sessions.
He is in remission and serves as a volunteer counselor at the Hope Foundation for Cancer Care.
“You may leave your destiny in God’s hands, but you must be in control of your decisions,” Wang said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened 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), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS