Taiwan has again this year not been invited to the annual World Health Assembly (WHA), but it intends to have a presence on the sidelines of the event in Geneva, Switzerland, including promoting the nation’s achievements in public health and healthcare.
The International Cooperation and Development Fund (ICDF), a government-funded agency that runs foreign-aid programs, is on Wednesday next week to make a presentation in Geneva on Taiwan’s public health-related cooperation projects, ICDF Deputy Secretary-General Lee Pai-po (李柏浡) said on Friday.
The WHA is being held from Monday to Saturday next week.
At the planned event, ICDF is to present how it helped two allies, Belize and Saint Kitts and Nevis, establish basic facilities to prevent and control chronic kidney disease, which people in those nations are prone to, Lee said.
The agency helped train local healthcare personnel and promoted measures for kidney disease prevention with assistance from Taiwanese hospitals, with the goal of lowering the disease’s prevalence in those nations, Lee said.
ICDF is also assisting Paraguay, another of Taiwan’s 19 diplomatic allies, to improve its management of medical data and overall medical services, he added.
Lee said that Taiwan would invite health officials from allies and nations friendly to Taiwan to the presentation, which he hopes would let the world know about Taiwan’s capabilities in promoting public health and preventing chronic diseases.
Taiwan is eager to share with other nations its expertise and know-how in the establishment of medical data systems because of its competitiveness in that field, Lee said.
The publicity blitz is part of Taiwan’s ongoing campaign to secure the support of the international community to help it overcome China’s obstruction and to participate in the WHA.
Since 1997, Taiwan has made efforts to join the WHO, but without success. From 2009 to 2016, when relations with China were better, it was invited to attend the WHA, the decisionmaking body of the WHO, as an observer.
However, Beijing has taken a hardline stance toward Taiwan since the Democratic Progressive Party took power in May 2016, cutting official ties and blocking Taiwan’s participation in international organizations.
Last year, the WHO, under pressure from China, withheld an invitation for Taiwan to participate in the 70th WHA. This year, Taiwan was kept out of the assembly for the second year in a row due to China’s obstruction.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
HOSPITALITY HIT: Hotels in Hualien have an occupancy rate of 10 percent, down from 30 percent before the earthquake, a Tourism Administration official said The Executive Yuan yesterday unveiled a stimulus package of vouchers and subsidies to revive tourism in Hualien County following a quake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale. The tremor on April 3, which killed at least 17 people and left two others missing, caused the county an estimated NT$3 billion (US$92.7 million) in damages. The Ministry of Economic Affairs is to issue vouchers worth NT$200 at the price of NT$100 for purchases at the Dongdamen Night Market (東大門夜市) in Hualien City to boost spending, a ministry official told a news conference after a Cabinet meeting in Taipei. The ministry plans to issue 18,400