Marching to the beat of a large wooden drum, about 500 doctors, pharmacists and dietitians marched in Taipei yesterday, protesting the nation's recent failure to gain an observer seat in the WHO.
Marchers protested outside government offices, urging officials to do more to encourage Taiwan's allies to support Taiwan's bid for a seat.
Support for Taiwan was so thin in the World Health Assembly (WHA) meeting last Monday, that it didn't even include the issue of the nation's observer status bid on the agenda of the WHO's yearly meeting, which was held in Geneva last week. The WHA is the WHO's highest decision-making body.
PHOTO: FANG PIN-CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
Taiwan's failure was a result of an effort by Beijing to persuade its allies to speak out against Taiwan's participation during the meeting.
But instead of putting all the blame for Taiwan's failed bid on China, which strongly opposes the nation's membership in major world organizations, marchers yesterday called on the government to start pushing harder for a seat now, a year ahead of the WHO's next annual meeting.
"We need to make it clear to our allies that Taiwan wants to become an observer," said Huang Ching-shun (
"We need to work hard, start now, and keep it going all the way until next year," said T.S. Peng (
Though US President George W. Bush had signed a bill authorizing the US State Department to help Taiwan gain observer status and the secretary of the US Health and Human Services agency Tommy Thompson had also voiced support for Taiwan's bid last Tuesday in Geneva, Taipei still couldn't muster enough support.
In addition to the US, Japan is in favor of Taiwan's participation.
Last Tuesday Yasuo Fukuda, a Japanese government spokesman, said that being geographically close to Taiwan, the Japanese government is interested in any effort that would help raise Taiwan's health care standards.
According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, during the body's meeting in Geneva on Friday, 16 representatives from 16 countries voiced explicit support for Taiwan's bid to participate in the WHA as an observer.
The MOFA said that health ministers, vice ministers and other officials from the 16 countries spoke either at the WHA's steering committee meeting and plenary sessions or at its roundtable discussions in support of Taiwan's appeal.
The 16 nations were Senegal, Burkina Faso, Honduras, Belize, Panama, Sao Tome and Principe, Malawi, Grenada, the Marshall Islands, Palau, Liberia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Guatemala, Haiti, Chad and Gambia.
In order to assure a better chance next year, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Chiou Jong-nan (
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