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.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS