An agreement on cross-strait medical cooperation that is expected to be signed in the next round of negotiations between Taiwan and China will serve to better safeguard the health and safety of Taiwanese, the Department of Health (DOH) said yesterday.
The government is aware of the problems that could derive from frequent contact between Taiwan and China, Health Minister Yaung Chih-liang (楊志良) said, saying that about 5 million people travel across the Strait each year.
For example, Yaung said, many Taiwanese visitors to China like to buy medicine there, but “we have no way of stopping them from purchasing drugs that do not meet medical certification standards in Taiwan.”
Under the proposed agreement, a higher accreditation system, like the one used in Taiwan, will be implemented in China to better protect consumers there, he said.
Yaung said the details of the agreement have not yet been finalized, but both sides have agreed to focus on four major areas — disease control and prevention, drug safety management, the safety of herbal medicine and emergency rescue.
Mainland Affairs Council Minister Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) said the agreement is complex and that an inter-ministerial consultation team, including representatives from the DOH, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Council of Agriculture, is working on the negotiation process.
The agreement will be signed under a reciprocal and egalitarian framework and a principle of “five noes” will be employed to protect the rights of Taiwanese, she said.
The “five noes” are: no Chinese medical personnel will be allowed to obtain a license or practice medicine in Taiwan; no Chinese capital will be permitted to establish hospitals in Taiwan; no interference will be made in the education of medical personnel; and no medical treatment at hospitals in China will be covered by Taiwan’s health insurance program.
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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