Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Michael Kau (高英茂) said yesterday he could "boldly predict" that the World Health Organization (WHO) would immediately respond to a government request for emergency assistance if it reported cases of infectious disease to the health body.
During a press conference reviewing the nation's failed ninth bid to join the World Health Assembly (WHA) -- the WHO's top decision-making body -- as an observer, Kau said that Taiwan had contributed to revisions of the International Health Regulations (IHR), the WHO's global legal framework for infectious disease control.
Taiwan had helped introduce the principle of "universal application" in the regulations, Kau said.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs hopes the new regulations, bound by the "universal application" principle, will extend their framework to cover Taiwan's disease-control operations.
Kau said Taiwan's efforts to participate in the WHO over the years had made communication between the government and the WHO Secretariat smoother.
If SARS cases were to appear in Taiwan now, Taipei would "have immediate access to the WHO Secretariat," and the Secretariat "will respond instantly," he said.
The communication status was a result of the "understanding" Taiwan had obtained from the WHO Secretariat, he said.
Kau did not, however, provide details on how the insertion of the "universal application" principle in the regulations would benefit Taiwan.
Kau said he could not reveal how Taiwan planned to strengthen its participation in the WHO under the new regulations because China would attempt to disrupt the process if it knew about Taiwan's plans to work with the WHO.
The ministry would also decide whether or not to launch Taiwan's 10th bid to become an observer at the WHA based on developments in cross-strait relations and the international community, he said.
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The department would review domestic medical regulations to see whether they corresponded appropriately to the regulations, he said.
Under the IHR framework, governments are required to report disease data.
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:
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