The number of deaths from serious child abuse last year fell to its lowest in five years, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said yesterday.
After several reports of serious child abuse over the past few months sparked a public outrage, the Legislative Yuan’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee asked government agencies to report on their child protection programs and regulations.
The number of child or adolescent deaths caused by serious abuse was 15 last year, lower than the previous four years, which ranged from 18 to 31 deaths a year, ministry data showed.
Photo: Huang Yao-cheng, Taipei Times
About 70 percent of the victims were under six years old and about half were under three, the data showed.
Several lawmakers questioned why the data showed annual increases in the number of child abuse reports over the past three years to reach 59,936 last year, even as the number of annual registered cases fell.
Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said that the increase was caused by heightened public awareness, but added that after eliminating repeat cases and evaluating them with standard safety assessment indicators, about 31,000 to 35,000 registered cases remained. The total last year was about 33,000 cases, he said.
When Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) asked whether the deaths were among the registered cases, Chen said that over the past five years, about two-thirds of the abuse cases that resulted in death went unreported until the victims died.
The “dark figure” is incredibly high, showing that there are flaws in the ministry’s child abuse report mechanism and the safety assessment indicators, Chiang said, adding that the ministry should find the problems and resolve them immediately.
“We are planning an active warning system, using an information system to help discover most probable cases of child abuse in children under six, which can reinforce the passive reporting mechanism,” Chen said, adding that children under six are less capable of protecting themselves, so hopefully the warning system can help prevent the risks.
The ministry’s Department of Protective Services Deputy Director Lin Wei-yan (林維言) said that the warning system would determine high-risk families by evaluating indicators such as children who do not have National Health Insurance for more than a year or school-age children who are not enrolled, adding that the system would become operational by June.
There are 77 incidents of Taiwanese travelers going missing in China between January last year and last month, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) said. More than 40 remain unreachable, SEF Secretary-General Luo Wen-jia (羅文嘉) said on Friday. Most of the reachable people in the more than 30 other incidents were allegedly involved in fraud, while some had disappeared for personal reasons, Luo said. One of these people is Kuo Yu-hsuan (郭宇軒), a 22-year-old Taiwanese man from Kaohsiung who went missing while visiting China in August. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office last month said in a news statement that he was under investigation
‘JOINT SWORD’: Whatever President Lai says in his Double Ten speech, China would use it as a pretext to launch ‘punishment’ drills for his ‘separatist’ views, an official said China is likely to launch military drills this week near Taiwan, using President William Lai’s (賴清德) upcoming national day speech as a pretext to pressure the nation to accept its sovereignty claims, Taiwanese officials said. China in May launched “punishment” drills around Taiwan shortly after Lai’s inauguration, in what Beijing said was a response to “separatist acts,” sending heavily armed warplanes and staging mock attacks as state media denounced newly inaugurated Lai. The May drills were dubbed “Joint Sword — 2024A” and drew concerns from capitals, including Washington. Lai is to deliver a key speech on Thursday in front of the Presidential Office
An aviation jacket patch showing a Formosan black bear punching Winnie the Pooh has become popular overseas, including at an aviation festival held by the Japan Air Self-Defense Force at the Ashiya Airbase yesterday. The patch was designed last year by Taiwanese designer Hsu Fu-yu (徐福佑), who said that it was inspired by Taiwan’s countermeasures against frequent Chinese military aircraft incursions. The badge shows a Formosan black bear holding a Republic of China flag as it punches Winnie the Pooh — a reference to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — who is dressed in red and is holding a honey pot with
Taiwan was listed in 14th place among the world's wealthiest country in terms of GDP per capita, in the latest rankings released on Monday by Forbes magazine. Taiwan's GDP per capita was US$76,860, which put it at No. 14 on the list of the World's 100 Richest Countries this year, one spot above Hong Kong with US$75,130. The magazine's list of the richest countries in the world is compiled based on GDP per capita data, as estimated by the IMF. However, for a more precise measure of a nation's wealth, the magazine also considers purchasing power parity, which is a metric used to
RSS