A women’s rights group and a legislator urged the government to establish an official reporting mechanism for suspected adverse reactions to the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination, as government-funded vaccinations are to begin soon.
The Health Promotion Administration in February announced that government-funded HPV vaccinations would be given to seventh-grade girls from November, and that an estimated 100,000 students would be vaccinated each year.
HPV is mainly transmitted through sexual contact and the vaccine protects against several types of HPV, including two high-risk strains that cause nearly 70 percent of cervical cancers and precancerous cervical lesions, the administration said.
In June, two Control Yuan members launched an investigation into the policy, saying that it seemed to lack enough risk evaluations and supporting measures and that a verification mechanism was needed to test the vaccine’s effectiveness.
Taiwan Women’s Link chairwoman Huang Sue-ying (黃淑英) and Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lin Shu-fen (林淑芬) on Friday said the government should establish a reporting mechanism to handle cases of suspected adverse reactions to the vaccine.
They presented the case of a woman in her late 30s surnamed Chen who said that she suffered serious adverse reactions when she was vaccinated at the recommendation of her doctor after giving birth to her second child in February.
Chen said she experienced numbness, chest pain, weakness on one side of her body and visual impairment, adding that she was diagnosed with a central nervous system disorder called neuromyelitis optica, which needs long-term therapy.
About 800,000 doses of the HPV vaccine were administered in Taiwan over the past decade, and 167 suspected adverse reactions were reported, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) official Chen Ko-hsin (陳可欣) said, but added that this was the first reported case of neuromyelitis optica.
“Pharmaceutical companies are required to report to the FDA all suspected adverse reactions in the first five years after a new drug is launched on the market,” she said.
Although most vaccines are considered safe, the government must still establish a reporting mechanism to handle cases of adverse reactions, Lin said.
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
Taiwan’s passport ranked 34th in the world, with access to 141 visa-free destinations, according to the latest update to the Henley Passport Index released today. The index put together by Henley & Partners ranks 199 passports globally based on the number of destinations holders can access without a visa out of 227, and is updated monthly. The 141 visa-free destinations for Taiwanese passport holders are a slight decrease from last year, when holders had access to 145 destinations. Botswana and Columbia are among the countries that have recently ended visa-free status for Taiwanese after “bowing to pressure from the Chinese government,” the Ministry
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