Page 4 - 2022 Taiwan Health and Welfare Report

Preface
In 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic continued to spread around the world. While taking protective measures, Taiwan's Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) had been upholding its vision to become "the most trustworthy ministry of the people" by integrating and effectively allocating social welfare resources, improving skills in the healthcare profession and consolidating the health and welfare systems.
Taiwan experienced negative population growth for the first time in 2020. Taiwan’s declining birth rate in 2021 reached 6.6‰, which was lower than the median of 10‰ in OECD member countries. Consequently, the MOHW created a child care friendly environment, which increased the number of prenatal checkup from 10 to 14; subsidies for infertility treatment were expanded from low-income and middle-low-income households to all infertile couples if either the husband or the wife is a citizen of Taiwan. Since 2021, Taiwan has launched the Program for Excellence in Child Health Care to improve the quality of pediatric care and prevent avoidable disability death. Moreover, Taiwan supported public and quasi-public childcare services and increased its child-raising allowance and childcare subsidies in August 2021.
Additionally, the share of the population aged 65 years and above increased to 16.9% in 2021. Facing an aged society, the MOHW has drawn up a new white paper dealing with this issue and incorporated the four overarching goals of independence, self-reliance, inclusiveness and sustainability into the strategy. The MOHW has set up a total of 4,610 community care stations to encourage social connections for elderly. The MOHW has also continued to support dementia-friendly environments and the Long-term Care Plan 2.0. In addition to easing the burden for families of long-term caregiving through referral services, Taiwan has paid attention to five additional measures: funding for long-term care, caring for more families in need, expanding services, increasing the number of daycare centers, and providing affordable residential institutions. In a 2021 survey of Taiwan's long-term care users, the satisfaction rate of reducing overall burden of family caregivers reached 97.6%, an increase of 7.1% compared to 90.5% in 2020.
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