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.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS