Guatemalan Ambassador to Taiwan Olga Maria Aguja Zuniga on Monday said that her nation supports Taiwan’s World Health Assembly (WHA) bid, amid questions as to why it did not send a letter to the WHO calling for Taiwan’s inclusion in the annual meeting.
“The foreign policy of Guatemala has different ways of expressing its support to Taiwan,” Aguja told reporters in an e-mail. “Guatemala usually expresses personally its support in favor of Taiwan through its representatives in Geneva [Switzerland] before the members of the executive board of the World Health Assembly.”
Guatemalan health officials and representatives in their speeches at the WHA or at WHA executive council meetings have also repeatedly recognized the cooperation that Taiwan provides on health issues, she added.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
At the January meeting of the WHA executive board, a Guatemalan representative expressed the nation’s support and gratitude for the work carried out by Taiwan in Guatemala, she said, referring to Guatamalan First Secretary to the Geneva mission Luis Erick Gudiel Pineda’s speech on Jan. 28.
Fourteen of Taiwan’s 17 allies have sent letters to the WHO director-general asking that the issue of Taiwan’s exclusion from the WHA be placed on the agenda for discussion during the 72nd WHA session that began on Monday.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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