The Indigenous Peoples Health Act (原住民族健康法), which seeks to address the shorter average lifespan of indigenous people through improved resources, passed its third reading at the legislature yesterday.
Ministry of the Interior statistics show that the average lifespan of indigenous people is 6.94 years shorter than the national average.
The act says that the difference might be due to lifestyle, environmental and biological factors creating health issues unique to indigenous communities, as well as lower levels of access to medical resources.
Photo: Tien Yu-hua, Taipei Times
The act would require health officials to regularly investigate and study the health status and needs of people living in indigenous communities, build a health database for those communities and train healthcare personnel for their specific needs.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare would be required to “recruit representatives of indigenous peoples, representatives of relevant agencies and experts in the healthcare of indigenous peoples.”
The act would require the health minister to convene meetings on policy issues related to indigenous people’s health at which “no less than half of the members should be recognized as members of indigenous communities.”
The act stipulates that the Ministry of Health and Welfare should cooperate with the Ministry of Education to maintain a specified number of publicly funded spots in medical training programs, “to ensure the provision of medical services in indigenous communities and to ensure an adequate number of properly trained healthcare personnel in those communities.”
The education ministry should also encourage the inclusion in the curriculum of medical programs with content related to the specific health needs of indigenous communities, it says.
Recruitment at healthcare institutions in areas with indigenous populations should also give priority to candidates who are proficient in locally spoken indigenous languages, it says.
Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung and Taoyuan would issue a decision at 8pm on whether to cancel work and school tomorrow due to forecasted heavy rain, Keelung Mayor Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑) said today. Hsieh told reporters that absent some pressing reason, the four northern cities would announce the decision jointly at 8pm. Keelung is expected to receive between 300mm and 490mm of rain in the period from 2pm today through 2pm tomorrow, Central Weather Administration data showed. Keelung City Government regulations stipulate that school and work can be canceled if rain totals in mountainous or low-elevation areas are forecast to exceed 350mm in
EVA Airways president Sun Chia-ming (孫嘉明) and other senior executives yesterday bowed in apology over the death of a flight attendant, saying the company has begun improving its health-reporting, review and work coordination mechanisms. “We promise to handle this matter with the utmost responsibility to ensure safer and healthier working conditions for all EVA Air employees,” Sun said. The flight attendant, a woman surnamed Sun (孫), died on Friday last week of undisclosed causes shortly after returning from a work assignment in Milan, Italy, the airline said. Chinese-language media reported that the woman fell ill working on a Taipei-to-Milan flight on Sept. 22
COUNTERMEASURE: Taiwan was to implement controls for 47 tech products bound for South Africa after the latter downgraded and renamed Taipei’s ‘de facto’ offices The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is still reviewing a new agreement proposed by the South African government last month to regulate the status of reciprocal representative offices, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. Asked about the latest developments in a year-long controversy over Taiwan’s de facto representative office in South Africa, Lin during a legislative session said that the ministry was consulting with legal experts on the proposed new agreement. While the new proposal offers Taiwan greater flexibility, the ministry does not find it acceptable, Lin said without elaborating. The ministry is still open to resuming retaliatory measures against South
1.4nm WAFERS: While TSMC is gearing up to expand its overseas production, it would also continue to invest in Taiwan, company chairman and CEO C.C. Wei said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) has applied for permission to construct a new plant in the Central Taiwan Science Park (中部科學園區), which it would use for the production of new high-speed wafers, the National Science and Technology Council said yesterday. The council, which supervises three major science parks in Taiwan, confirmed that the Central Taiwan Science Park Bureau had received an application on Friday from TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, to commence work on the new A14 fab. A14 technology, a 1.4 nanometer (nm) process, is designed to drive artificial intelligence transformation by enabling faster computing and greater power
RSS