Taiwan could play an important role in global efforts to prevent the spread of communicable diseases, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said on Sunday at a reception in Geneva, Switzerland, held by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The spread of communicable diseases knows no borders, Chen said, adding that as a hub in Asia that receives many international travelers, Taiwan, which has cultivated advanced medical services and technologies, plays an important role in preventing the spread of infectious diseases.
A delegation led by Chen arrived in the city on Saturday and is to hold a series of events on the sidelines of the 71st annual meeting of the World Health Assembly (WHA), which Taiwan has for the second consecutive year not been invited to attend as an observer due to opposition from China.
Photo: Lu Yi-hsuan, Taipei Times
At the reception, which was attended by representatives of Taiwan’s 19 allies, Chen said that the WHO’s exclusion of Taiwan from the WHA meeting is unfair to Taiwan and violates the organization’s platform, which designates healthcare as a universal value.
Taiwan’s participation in the WHA has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with basic human rights, Chen said.
Echoing Chen, Marshallese Minister of Health Kalani Kaneko said Taiwan not only needs the WHO, but the WHO needs Taiwan.
He cited the theme of this year’s WHA: “Health for All, All for Health.”
The Marshall Islands is one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies.
The leaders of all countries in the world should promote healthcare as a universal value to everybody on the planet to realize the message of the WHA meeting, Kaneko said.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS