Taipei residents aged 40 to 64 who receive a government-funded adult health examination in the city could receive an six additional tests for a limited time only, the city’s Department of Health said yesterday.
The Health Promotion Administration (HPA) provides a free health examination every three years for people aged 40 to 64, and an annual examination for people aged 65 or older, indigenous people aged 55 or older and polio patients who are 35 or older.
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said 21 percent of the city’s residents are aged 65 or older and the city’s average life expectancy is 83.75 years, which is 3.91 years more than the national average.
Photo: Chiang Tsai-chen, Taipei Times
As people are living longer, it is important that they are healthy and happy, which can be achieved by disease prevention, early detection and treatment, so the city government is offering six extra tests along with the HPA’s adult health examination, he said.
Until Oct. 31, or until all the slots are filled, city residents aged 40 to 64 who received the HPA’s health exam at Taipei City Hospital’s branches (excluding the Songde branch) would be eligible for the extra tests, Chiang said.
Taipei Department of Health Commissioner Chen Yen-yuan (陳彥元) said the six extra items test a person’s blood urea nitrogen, uric acid, glycated hemoglobin and blood count, as well as for thyroid-stimulating hormone and carbohydrate antigen 19-9 — a antigen associated with tumors.
The six tests usually cost about NT$1,000, but would be offered free of charge to eligible recipients for a limited time, the department said.
The HPA’s Nutrition and Health Survey in Taiwan for 2017-2020 found that the prevalence of high blood pressure, blood sugar and blood lipids — or the “three highs” — was 26 percent, 11 percent and 26 percent, respectively.
The “three highs” are the most common chronic conditions among people in Taiwan and there are usually no early signs that someone has one of the conditions, but many of the 10 leading causes of death are associated with them, Chen said.
The HPA’s adult health examination includes tests to detect the “three highs,” so the department encourages adults aged 40 or older to go for a health examination regularly to detect conditions early and reduce the risk of more serious harm to their health, he said.
The department said that people aged 45 to 79 who have received the HPA’s free one-time hepatitis B and hepatitis C screening test would also be eligible to participate in a lottery for cash prizes.
To be in with a chance those who are eligible should register on the department’s Web site before Dec. 31, it said.
NATURE TAKES ITS COURSE: The agency’s head said he felt a sense of loss watching red-banded snakes eat the babies, as they had decided on non-intervention The Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency yesterday released a documentary on a hundred-pace viper that had incubated 16 eggs, all of which hatched, but only a baby viper escaped after they were attacked by red-banded snakes. The agency’s Taichung branch last year launched the viper reproduction monitoring project soon after forest rangers Lin Chun-yu (林俊佑) and Chou Chia-cheng (周家成) spotted a pregnant hundred-pace viper in a grass-covered burrow near a parking lot in Tbulan Village (松鶴部落). The Atayal village, in Taichung’s Heping District (和平), is headed by Ecyang Yapu, who was positive about the project and assisted in access control and power
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said that it had deployed vessels to “monitor” Chinese ships operating in waters off the east coast. The CGA said it dispatched vessels in response to a China Coast Guard announcement that it had carried out another “routine law-enforcement patrol” in waters off the east coast. “The CGA firmly rejects China’s cognitive warfare campaign of ‘law enforcement in name, jurisdictional expansion in practice,’” it said on X. As of 11am yesterday, two China Coast Guard ships were “loitering and drifting” about 105 nautical miles (195km) and 74 nautical miles east of Green Island (綠島) respectively, it said. It
A Straits Exchange Foundation official today warned that yielding to political pressure in exchange for access to China’s entertainment industry rarely ends well, amid rumors that China is seeking to lure Taiwanese K-pop star Chou Tzu-yu (周子瑜). Chou, more commonly known as Tzuyu, is the only Taiwanese member of the girl group Twice. Her contract with JYP Entertainment is set to expire at the end of this year, and there have been widespread reports that she would not renew it. She is reportedly planning to pursue solo activities under her parents’ agency, Yu Hai Entertainment (瑜海娛樂), although China has also reportedly offered
A tropical depression near Hainan that was once Typhoon Saudel may once again strengthen into a tropical storm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday, but a sea warning for waters around Taiwan is unlikely. CWA forecaster Huang En-hung (黃恩鴻) said that Saudel would return to being a weak tropical storm by late yesterday or early this morning. However, as the storm is to gradually weaken again and would head toward China’s Guangdong Province away from Taiwan, the chances that it would affect Taiwan enough for the CWA to issue a sea warning are relatively low,
RSS