The Health Promotion Administration (HPA) yesterday confirmed that it would provide free human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccinations to seventh-grade girls from the middle of December, as an infectious disease doctor said that the bivalent vaccine is about 90 percent effective in preventing cervical cancer.
HPVs are a group of more than 100 types of viruses that are extremely common worldwide and transmitted mainly through sexual contact. At least 13 types can cause cancer and nearly all cases of cervical cancer can be attributed to HPV infection, with two high-risk HPV types — 16 and 18 — causing about 70 percent of cervical cancers and precancerous cervical lesions.
The HPA said cervical cancer is the seventh-leading cause of cancer deaths among women in Taiwan and the WHO has identified the primary target group for HPV vaccination as girls aged nine to 14.
Ninety-one countries have included HPV vaccinations in their national immunization programs, as has Taiwan in its 2025 health and welfare policy white papers, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said yesterday.
The vaccines have been purchased and would be distributed to local governments after the Food and Drug Administration finishes inspections, he said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Arthur Chen (陳宜民) on Oct. 24 asked why the government purchased bivalent vaccines — which protect against HPV16 and HPV18 — but not the advanced nonavalent vaccine — which protects against nine types of HPV, including HPV16 and HPV18.
The HPA yesterday asked National Taiwan University Hospital Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases director Huang Li-min (黃立民) to explain that bivalent vaccines are safe and effective.
Huang said HPVs can be classified into different species, with HPV16 belonging to the A9 species and HPV18 to the A7 species, and a total of 10 types of HPVs under the two species (A7 and A9).
While the government-funded bivalent vaccine protects against HPV16 and HPV18, it also offers cross-protection against infection with other HPV types in the species A9 and A7, he said, adding that studies suggest the cross protection is about 90 percent effective against precancerous cervical lesions.
More than 270 million HPV vaccines have been distributed since they were approved and the WHO Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety considers them “extremely safe,” he said.
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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