Residents of Taipei, Taoyuan and Tainan lag behind those of the three other special municipalities in taking advantage of free health checkups for young children, data from the Ministry of Health and Welfare showed.
The ministry offers seven free checkups for children up to the age of seven, aimed at preventing stunted development.
The WHO defines stunting as impaired growth and development due to poor nutrition, repeated infection or inadequate psychosocial stimulation.
Between 958,000 and 1.1 million preventative checkups were performed annually from 2017 to 2021, and 77.7 to 80.9 percent of children received them every year, the data showed.
Among Taiwan’s regions, the lowest number of children receiving them were in Keelung, at 62.6 percent, Lienchiang County at 70.8 percent and Chiayi County at 73.3 percent.
For this year the ministry has budgeted NT$240 million (US$7.8 million) for the checkups, saying it anticipates about 888,000 checkups to be performed.
Chen Li-chuan (陳麗娟), a senior specialist in the Health Promotion Administration’s Maternal and Child Health Division, on Friday said that the participation rate is calculated based on population figures provided by household registration offices.
As many people do not live where they are registered, the rates are only estimates, she said.
The Taipei Department of Health said that the city had the highest checkup participation rate before the COVID-19 pandemic began, but it decreased significantly in 2020.
However, the rate increased over the past two years, it said, adding that it sends notifications about the checkups to parents via SMS.
The city also sends nurses to kindergartens each year to conduct physical, vision, hearing and oral examinations on about 60,000 children, it said.
Taoyuan Department of Public Health Deputy Director Su Po-wen (蘇柏文) said his agency has provided checkups at kindergartens and community centers since 2020, helping the city reach a coverage rate of 90.16 percent.
Additional reporting by Tsai Ssu-pei, Cheng Shu-ting and Hung Jui-chin
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
Taiwan is to have nine extended holidays next year, led by a nine-day Lunar New Year break, the Cabinet announced yesterday. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday next year matches the length of this year’s holiday, which featured six extended holidays. The increase in extended holidays is due to the Act on the Implementation of Commemorative and Festival Holidays (紀念日及節日實施條例), which was passed early last month with support from the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party. Under the new act, the day before Lunar New Year’s Eve is also a national holiday, and Labor Day would no longer be limited
COMMITMENTS: The company had a relatively low renewable ratio at 56 percent and did not have any goal to achieve 100 percent renewable energy, the report said Pegatron Corp ranked the lowest among five major final assembly suppliers in progressing toward Apple Inc’s commitment to be 100 percent carbon neutral by 2030, a Greenpeace East Asia report said yesterday. While Apple has set the goal of using 100 percent renewable energy across its entire business, supply chain and product lifecycle by 2030, carbon emissions from electronics manufacturing are rising globally due to increased energy consumption, it said. Given that carbon emissions from its supply chain accounted for more than half of its total emissions last year, Greenpeace East Asia evaluated the green transition performance of Apple’s five largest final
The first tropical storm of the year in the western North Pacific, Wutip (蝴蝶), has formed over the South China Sea and is expected to move toward Hainan Island off southern China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. The agency said a tropical depression over waters near the Paracel and Zhongsha islands strengthened into a tropical storm this morning. The storm had maximum sustained winds near its center of 64.8kph, with peak gusts reaching 90kph, it said. Winds at Beaufort scale level 7 — ranging from 50kph to 61.5kph — extended up to 80km from the center, it added. Forecaster Kuan Hsin-ping
RSS