The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will look into why the WHO has made Taiwan the same color as China on its H1N1 influenza global outbreak map, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lin (林永樂) told a legislative committee yesterday.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Yeh Yi-jin (葉宜津) said the WHO Web site showed China, Hong Kong and Taiwan as “red,” which means the area has confirmed cases of the flu virus.
Taiwan remains H1N1-free while China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Thailand have all confirmed cases of the virus.
“The government must protest this immediately. This mislabeling has already had an indirect negative impact on Taiwan’s economy,” she said during a meeting of the Foreign and National Defense Committee.
Yeh said the tourism industry had suffered a 40 percent setback because of the pandemic.
DPP Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) demanded the ministry protest to the WHO over a memorandum of understanding (MOU) it signed with Beijing in 2005 to limit Taiwan’s participation in the organization.
The memorandum says Taiwan’s involvement in the WHO must be approved by Beijing and that all communications between Taiwan and the WHO must be via China.
The government does not recognize the WHO memorandum as valid.
“It is clear that Taiwan’s accession to the World Health Assembly [WHA] this year was an arrangement under the memorandum’s framework. Taiwan’s invitation from the director-general came after Beijing notified the WHO,” Kuan said.
Lin refuted Kuan’s assertion, saying Taiwan’s participation as an observer was a result of Taiwan’s direct consultation with the WHO.
He said he was certain Taiwan’s WHA observer status would be extended.
DPP Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) said the ministry had denigrated Taiwan’s sovereignty by not sending an official as part of the delegation to the WHA, which starts on Monday.
Lin said the delegate positions were all given to health experts. However, Paul Chang (章文樑), director-general of the ministry’s Department of International Organizations, would also accompany the delegation to oversee administrative affairs, he said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) said the DPP’s criticism about Taiwan’s WHA participation was due to its envy of the KMT’s achievements.
Any party that cannot recognize the success of another “will never grow up,” he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching