Taiwanese doctors prescribe drugs to just about every patient, many completely needlessly. This is creating a nation of people with weak immune systems and also helping to fuel the global antibiotic crisis
Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/02/22
By: David Spencer,Taiwan News, Contributing Writer
Dealing with a nasty bout of the flu was not how I envisaged spending the first few days of
Tamiflu. (By Wikimedia Commons)
the Year of the Dog. But being ill has given me another first-hand experience of Taiwan’s healthcare system, which has left me with both positive and negative feelings.
Firstly, when you are ill in Taiwan, you can get seen fast. We called into the local doctor’s clinic at around 8 p.m. and within 10 minutes were sat with the GP. She checked me over then explained, in pretty good English, that she needed to do a quick test to see if I had flu or just a regular cold. This took another 10 minutes, after which she told me I had Type B flu and prescribed me various pills to make me feel better.
She also looked at my 3-year old daughter, who was just starting to show some of the symptoms and, without doing the tests, prescribed medication for her too. Within half an hour we were back at home and had only been relieved of around NT$200 (US$6.80) for my treatment. [FULL STORY]
