The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), including several public health experts, warned that the A(H1N1) epidemic could develop into a severe epidemic but the government did not seem to realize its gravity and was not fully prepared.
“Given the medical advancements and our experience in battling the SARS epidemic [in 2003], I'm confident that Taiwan is capable of taking on an A(H1N1) outbreak,” DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) told a news conference after a meeting at party headquarters on combating the flu.
“But whether our leaders are kept up to date on all information about the flu, whether they can exercise effective leadership and whether they are fully determined to take on the responsibility will be the keys [to success],” Tsai said.
Tsai and other DPP members voiced their concern that the government was not fully prepared to confront such a crisis.
The Department of Health (DOH) and the network of more than 200 hospitals across the country will play a major role in the epidemic prevention, but the rest of the government remains outside the loop instead of being in their “fighting positions,” Tsai said.
“It's just confusing to see DOH Minister Yaung Chih-liang (楊志良) advise against calling a national security meeting [to battle the epidemic], while President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) called for a meeting with [public health] experts,” Tsai said.
Tsai said she hoped that the government's chaotic and disorganized efforts to help victims of Typhoon Morakot would not be repeated if an epidemic strikes.
Deputy Yunlin County Commissioner Lee Ying-yuan (李應元), who majored in public health and served as Cabinet secretary-general at the time of the SARS outbreak in 2003, said that coordinated action between the Cabinet and the president, as the commander, was very important.
“For example, you need the Ministry of Education to decide whether to close schools, you need the Mainland Affairs Council to keep an eye on Taiwanese businesspeople in China who will be coming home for the Mid-Autumn Festival, and you may need the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to exchange information with other countries,” Lee said.
“The power to take national security measures and bypass restrictions imposed by current laws to get things under control as soon as possible [is vital],” Lee said.
DPP deputy secretary-general Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁), a doctor and specialist in disease prevention, agreed.
“The government really needs to get into action,” he said. “The 2 million doses of Tamiflu that the DOH has in stock are leftovers from the previous DPP government, who purchased them to combat the bird flu.”
Former health minister Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) panned Yaung's comment that “there will be people dying from injecting the (A)H1N1 vaccine.”
“Deaths caused by flu vaccines were common in the 1970s, but as medical technology has advanced, the death rate is now under one death for every 1 million people,” Chen said.
"The rate is low, and it's not a 'given,'" Chen said.
At a separate news conference at the Legislative Yuan yesterday, DPP Legislator Huang Sue-ying (黃淑英) voiced her objection to using children for testing of the new A(H1N1) vaccine that manufacturer Adimmune Corporation was allegedly planning.
“I am totally against using children as human test subjects for the vaccine until we have ascertained the safety of the new vaccine,” she 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:
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