A new cancer drug fund is to be maintained at a steady level, and would be supplemented each year based on its expenditure during the previous year, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday.
Lai made the remark during the Healthy Taiwan national forum in Taipei, during which Healthy Taiwan Promotion Committee deputy convener Chen Jyh-hong (陳志鴻) also proposed “five main pillars” for a healthy Taiwan.
The five main pillars are: preventing the “three highs” (high blood pressure, high blood sugar and high cholesterol), improving national mental health resilience, improving healthcare workers’ work conditions, implementing National Health Insurance (NHI) improvement and reforms, and ensuring the sustainability of the NHI system.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
Lai said that as the first president of Taiwan with a background in medicine, he thinks about how to bring the healthcare community together to improve the well-being of Taiwanese, helping people to become healthier and the nation to become stronger.
After the committee was established, experts and academics from various medical fields were invited to attend the meetings, he said.
The NHI budget was also increased by NT$53.1 billion (US$1.63 billion) this year, a growth of more than 6 percent, he said.
The adjustments are part of efforts to give the healthcare community sufficient funding and service capacity to take good care of patients, and improve healthcare workers’ salaries and working conditions, Lai said.
Cancer, which has consistently been the leading cause of death in Taiwan, is listed as a priority for prevention efforts, he said, adding that aside from increasing the budget for government-funded cancer screening to NT$6.8 billion this year, new screening methods were also introduced.
Regarding cancer treatment, Lai said Taiwan continues to promote precise medicine, and that while NT$5 billion has been allocated for the new cancer drug fund this year, the fund can be supplemented each year according to the actual expenditure in the previous year, ensuring that it remains at a steady level.
Some NHI mechanisms need to be adjusted, Lai said, adding that he hopes the Healthy Taiwan national forum can serve as a platform for collecting people’s opinions in improving health protection.
Meanwhile, Chen said he hopes Healthy Taiwan can be a national movement that transcends partisanship, and that the government can continue to implement the “five main pillars” to establish a healthy Taiwan.
The vision and goal of Healthy Taiwan is to help the 23.5 million people in Taiwan live longer, better and happier, so it should be a national movement that transcends partisanship, ethnicity and geographical limitations, he said.
Healthy Taiwan is supported by the Presidential Office and the central government, and has been allocated a five-year NT$48.9 billion budget, Chen said, adding that it adopts a bottom-up approach in planning and execution, so the health solutions are planned according to the area’s needs.
Taiwan’s preventable mortality, or deaths that could be avoided through effective public health and primary prevention interventions, has improved by 10 percent between 2001 and 2019, but the improvement rate is still lower than those in South Korea and Japan, he said.
Improving healthcare for people with the three-highs can help reduce preventable mortality and improve people’s overall health level, Chen said.
PRAISE: Japanese visitor Takashi Kubota said the Taiwanese temple architecture images showcased in the AI Art Gallery were the most impressive displays he saw Taiwan does not have an official pavilion at the World Expo in Osaka, Japan, because of its diplomatic predicament, but the government-backed Tech World pavilion is drawing interest with its unique recreations of works by Taiwanese artists. The pavilion features an artificial intelligence (AI)-based art gallery showcasing works of famous Taiwanese artists from the Japanese colonial period using innovative technologies. Among its main simulated displays are Eastern gouache paintings by Chen Chin (陳進), Lin Yu-shan (林玉山) and Kuo Hsueh-hu (郭雪湖), who were the three young Taiwanese painters selected for the East Asian Painting exhibition in 1927. Gouache is a water-based
Taiwan would welcome the return of Honduras as a diplomatic ally if its next president decides to make such a move, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. “Of course, we would welcome Honduras if they want to restore diplomatic ties with Taiwan after their elections,” Lin said at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, when asked to comment on statements made by two of the three Honduran presidential candidates during the presidential campaign in the Central American country. Taiwan is paying close attention to the region as a whole in the wake of a
A magnitude 4.1 earthquake struck eastern Taiwan's Hualien County at 2:23pm today, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA). The epicenter of the temblor was 5.4 kilometers northeast of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 34.9 km, according to the CWA. The earthquake's intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was the highest in Hualien County, where it measured 2 on Taiwan's 7-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 1 in Yilan county, Taichung, Nantou County, Changhua County and Yunlin County, the CWA said. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
OFF-TARGET: More than 30,000 participants were expected to take part in the Games next month, but only 6,550 foreign and 19,400 Taiwanese athletes have registered Taipei city councilors yesterday blasted the organizers of next month’s World Masters Games over sudden timetable and venue changes, which they said have caused thousands of participants to back out of the international sporting event, among other organizational issues. They also cited visa delays and political interference by China as reasons many foreign athletes are requesting refunds for the event, to be held from May 17 to 30. Jointly organized by the Taipei and New Taipei City governments, the games have been rocked by numerous controversies since preparations began in 2020. Taipei City Councilor Lin Yen-feng (林延鳳) said yesterday that new measures by
RSS