Parents should take their infants to a doctor if the children have jaundice for more than 14 days and have chalky gray or pale yellow stool, the Taiwan Children Liver Foundation said.
The foundation cited a recent case in which a girl, born in Taipei’s Cardinal Tien Hospital in June, was found to have jaundice four days after birth, but her condition worsened after receiving phototherapy, and blood tests showed that her total bilirubin and direct bilirubin levels were high.
She was transferred to National Taiwan University Hospital for further examination and was diagnosed with biliary atresia — a life-threatening condition in infants in which the bile ducts inside or outside the liver do not have openings. It must be corrected by surgery.
“Prevalence of biliary atresia in Taiwan is probably the second-highest in the world,” Foundation chairperson Chang Mei-hwei (張美惠) said. “An average of about 1.5 to two per 10,000 newborns in Taiwan have biliary atresia.”
She said that the prevalence of the condition in newborns in Western nations is about 0.5 to 0.7 per 10,000 people, and about 0.8 to 0.9 per 10,000 people in Japan.
Jaundice is one of the symptoms of biliary atresia, Chang said, adding that parents should take their babies to a doctor if they see signs of jaundice.
About 30 to 40 infants are diagnosed with biliary atresia in Taiwan every year, and it is the most common cause of liver transplants in children or infant deaths caused by liver disease, she said, adding that early detection is important for treatment, but about 30 percent of cases are not discovered at an early stage.
The foundation said parents can use the infant stool color card in the Children’s Health Manual published by the Health Promotion Administration to check whether their infant’s stool color is normal.
Twenty-four Republican members of the US House of Representatives yesterday introduced a concurrent resolution calling on the US government to abolish the “one China” policy and restore formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Led by US representatives Tom Tiffany and Scott Perry, the resolution calls for not only re-establishing formal relations, but also urges the US Trade Representative to negotiate a free-trade agreement (FTA) with Taiwan and for US officials to advocate for Taiwan’s full membership in the UN and other international organizations. In a news release announcing the resolution, Tiffany, who represents a Wisconsin district, called the “one China” policy “outdated, counterproductive
ON PAROLE: The 73-year-old suspect has a criminal record of rape committed when he was serving in the military, as well as robbery and theft, police said The Kaohsiung District Court yesterday approved the detention of a 73-year-old man for allegedly murdering three women. The suspect, surnamed Chang (張), was arrested on Wednesday evening in connection with the death of a 71-year-old woman surnamed Chao (趙). The Kaohsiung City Police Department yesterday also unveiled the identities of two other possible victims in the serial killing case, a 75-year-old woman surnamed Huang (黃), the suspect’s sister-in-law, and a 75-year-old woman surnamed Chang (張), who is not related to the suspect. The case came to light when Chao disappeared after taking the suspect back to his residence on Sunday. Police, upon reviewing CCTV
Johanne Liou (劉喬安), a Taiwanese woman who shot to unwanted fame during the Sunflower movement protests in 2014, was arrested in Boston last month amid US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said yesterday. The arrest of Liou was first made public on the official Web site of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday. ICE said Liou was apprehended for overstaying her visa. The Boston Field Office’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) had arrested Liou, a “fugitive, criminal alien wanted for embezzlement, fraud and drug crimes in Taiwan,” ICE said. Liou was taken into custody
TRUMP ERA: The change has sparked speculation on whether it was related to the new US president’s plan to dismiss more than 1,000 Joe Biden-era appointees The US government has declined to comment on a post that indicated the departure of Laura Rosenberger as chair of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT). Neither the US Department of State nor the AIT has responded to the Central News Agency’s questions on the matter, after Rosenberger was listed as a former chair on the AIT’s official Web site, with her tenure marked as 2023 to this year. US officials have said previously that they usually do not comment on personnel changes within the government. Rosenberger was appointed head of the AIT in 2023, during the administration of former US president Joe
RSS