Malignant melanoma medication is to be conditionally admitted under the National Health Insurance program (NHI), the Ministry of Health and Welfare announced yesterday, adding that people with late-stage cancer might become eligible for cell therapy treatment starting next month.
The ministry in June announced draft regulations for the use of specific medical equipment for examinations, including equipment used for cellular immunotherapy.
The ministry voted on the draft and passed it on Friday, and it is to be on the agenda at a regenerative medicine consultative meeting tomorrow.
If approved tomorrow, the regulations will be cleared for promulgation by September, Department of Medical Affairs Director-General Shih Chung-liang (石崇良) said.
Immunotherapy is generally divided into cellular and antibody therapies, of which only the latter is legal in Taiwan, Shih said.
Once cellular immunotherapy is made legal, it would offer more choices, Shih added.
Cellular immunotherapy seeks to direct the body’s immune system to target tumor-associated antigens, Shih said.
The cellular immunotherapy option to be introduced will only allow the use of the patient’s own immune system cells, Shih said, adding that this is safer for patients.
Cellular immunotherapy can also be applied to hematological malignancies, such as leukemia and multiple myeloma, and to terminal-stage lung and stomach cancers, Shih said.
According to ministry estimates, about 80,000 terminal stage cancer patients could benefit from immunotherapy each year, Shih added.
Previous lack of immunotherapy methods led many terminal-stage patients to seek medical treatment in Japan or the US, Shih said, adding that if the draft act is promulgated as expected, people will be given more treatment options.
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
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
Tourism in Kenting fell to a historic low for the second consecutive year last year, impacting hotels and other local businesses that rely on a steady stream of domestic tourists, the latest data showed. A total of 2.139 million tourists visited Kenting last year, down slightly from 2.14 million in 2024, the data showed. The number of tourists who visited the national park on the Hengchun Peninsula peaked in 2015 at 8.37 million people. That number has been below 2.2 million for two years, although there was a spike in October last year due to multiple long weekends. The occupancy rate for hotels
RSS