The Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee passed a resolution yesterday urging the Department of Health (DOH) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to lodge a stern protest with the WHO regarding a 2005 memorandum of understanding (MOU) it signed with Beijing to limit Taiwan’s access to the organization.
The ministry and DOH, however, feel a protest would be unnecessary because Taiwan has never and will never accept the MOU’s arrangements, which stipulate that all communications between the WHO and Taiwan must proceed via Beijing.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Huang Sue-ying (黃淑英) said the MOU denigrated Taiwan’s sovereignty and the government must express its discontent.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ho Tsai-feng (侯彩鳳) said the government must never acquiesce to any agreements or arrangements that belittles Taiwan’s sovereignty or puts the public’s health in jeopardy.
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lin (林永樂) said government has never and will never accept the MOU’s arrangements.
The government did not sent a written protest to WHO in 2005, he said, because it had decided to “completely ignore” the document although the representative office in Geneva had protested through diplomatic channels to the WHO secretariat at the time.
Department of Health Minister Yeh Chin-chuan (葉金川) said Taiwan had stayed mum about the MOU four years ago because “we refused to recognize the effectiveness” of the document, adding that Taiwan’s possible admission to the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an observer would result from an invitation from the WHO secretariat, which has nothing to do with the MOU.
Both officials said the use of “Chinese Taipei” as the designation in the upcoming WHA bid would be the country’s bottom line.
The ideal designation, Lin said, was “Republic of China.” He said the government would never agree to anything below the bottom line.
In a recent interview with the United Daily News, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said the cross-strait negotiation on Taiwan’s WHA future would be conducted in a third country.
Lin confirmed yesterday that the talks would not be in Beijing, but refused to give a location or date. Lin also rebuffed the rumor that former Control Yuan president Frederick Chien (錢復) — who will be the country’s envoy to the annual Boao Forum this year — would launch formal discussions with Beijing on the issue of Taiwan’s WHO participation when he meets Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) at the forum.
Lin said Chien would be attending the forum as a private citizen and had no authority to negotiate on behalf of the government. But Chien was free to discuss the issue with Wen if it came up in conversation, 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