The Health Promotion Administration (HPA) advised people to get regular medical checkups after a survey that showed about 400,000 people aged 40 or older who believed they were healthy and did not have the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol and high blood sugar — actually had at least one of the conditions.
The data were based on the 2017 Preventive Health Service for Adults, which includes government-funded health examinations once every three years for people aged 40 or older, and once every year for people aged 65 or older, or 55 or older for Aborigines.
Among those who said they did not have any of the three highs, about 392,000 (21.3 percent) were found to have high blood pressure; 162,000 (8.8 percent) had high blood sugar; and 475,000 had high blood cholesterol (25.8 percent), the survey showed.
Early signs of chronic diseases are often mild and can easily be overlooked, so getting regular health checkups are important for people to be aware of their health conditions, Chronic Disease Prevention Division official Chen Miao-hsin (陳妙心) said.
An HPA survey conducted in 2017 on 2,304 people aged 40 to 64 who had not received the free health exams in the past three years showed that the three most common reasons for not having them were: the respondents considered the checkups unnecessary; their workplace provided other health exams; and they did not have time for a checkup.
HPA Director-General Wang Ying-wei (王英偉) said people’s subjective feelings about their health conditions are often inaccurate, and many studies show that getting regular health exams can help detect early signs of chronic diseases, even before the onset of symptoms.
The health exam items in the Preventive Health Service for Adults include evaluations on the most critical risk factors for chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular, liver and kidney diseases, as well as basic physical examinations and health consultations, which can help people detect problems at an early stage and improve their lifestyles to prevent diseases or get proper treatment, Wang said.
Chen encouraged the public to visit the more than 6,000 hospitals and clinics that offer the Preventive Health Service for Adults across the nation, adding that people can find information on these facilities on the HPA’s Web site.
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