The Department of Health plans to protest a decision by the World Health Organization (WHO) to leave Taiwan off a list of a polio-free countries that was released in Kyoto, Japan on Sunday.
Thirty-seven countries in the western Pacific region were declared polio-free by the organization. China was also on the list, and Taiwan was included as a part of China.
"The success of polio eradication in Taiwan does not equate to China's situation," Lee Ming-liang (
The WHO said that polio had been eradicated in 37 countries, including China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam. That led the group to declare the west Pacific region polio-free, the second region in the world since the Americas in 1994 to receive the designation.
Health officials noted yesterday that Taiwan has been polio-free since 1985, as there have been no reported cases since that year.
"But mainly for political reasons the WHO has overlooked Taiwan's accomplishment in polio eradication," Lee said.
Hsu Hsu-mei (
"But Taiwan is not a WHO member state and was excluded," Hsu said.
The Republic of China was one of the WHO's founding members and has donated funds to its worldwide polio eradication program.
"The WHO still allows political issues to distort recognition of Taiwan's achievement," members of the Medical Professionals Alliance in Taiwan (台灣醫界聯盟) said yesterday.
Health officials established the Taiwan Polio Eradication Certification Committee in 1996. Two years later, Tony Adams, chairman of the WHO's west Pacific regional operations, was invited to Taiwan to learn more about the eradication of polio in this country.
"The WHO de facto recognized Taiwan as polio-free, otherwise it wouldn't declare the west Pacific region as polio-free," Hsu said.
The WHO's list on Sunday did not include North Korea and Indonesia. Despite the WHO's political snubs, health department officials said yesterday that Taiwan was committed to helping the organization eradicate polio around the world by 2005.
"We've donated more than US$1 million through Rotary International to the WHO's worldwide polio eradication program last year," Hsu said. "Taiwan will donate US$10 million, divided between the government and Rotary International in Taiwan, to WHO in installments over five years."
But health officials noted that Taiwan won't be recognized on the WHO's donor list because the sponsorship was done through Rotary International. The WHO declined to accept Taiwan's donation in the name of Taiwan.
Despite the WHO's exclusion, officials say they support the organization's goal of fighting disease around the world.
"Following the WHO's goal, our next target is measles," Hsu said. "We will devote ourselves to its eradication and will show the world Taiwan's success in public health."
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS