Five former health ministers from across party lines yesterday called on people to sign a petition pushing for Taiwan’s inclusion in the WHO amid global concern about a COVID-19 outbreak in China.
Taiwan attended the World Health Assembly (WHA), the WHO’s decisionmaking body, as an observer from 2009 to 2016, but has been denied entry since then due to pressure from Beijing.
Despite concern about the outbreak, Taiwan was denied entry at WHO emergency meetings for COVID-19, until Tuesday and Wednesday, when Taiwanese delegates were allowed to remotely join a research and development forum.
“Taiwan should be a member state at the WHO, or at least be a WHA observer,” Control Yuan President Chang Po-ya (張博雅) told a news conference in Taipei, adding that the target was 5 million signatures.
Membership in the WHO is a matter of public health and disease prevention, not politics, and it is humankind that suffers if prevention efforts for COVID-19 are not in place, said Chang, who was director of the department of health, the forerunner to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, from 1990 to 1997.
Former department of health directors Twu Shiing-jer (涂醒哲), Yeh Ching-chuan (葉金川) and Yaung Chih-liang (楊志良), and former minister of health and welfare Lin Tzou-yien (林奏延), also endorsed the petition.
As a sovereign nation, Taiwan has a right to a presence at the WHO, and excluding Taiwan not only infringes on the health rights of Taiwanese, but also sacrifices other countries’ rights, as they would miss Taiwan’s contributions, Twu said.
Taiwan has great healthcare and disease prevention systems, and never conceals epidemic situations, Yaung said, adding that although Taiwan and China have close ethnic and cultural connections, their political systems are completely different.
“It is wrong that China has been using politics to interfere with [Taiwan’s] disease prevention efforts,” he said.
Yuang called on Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), who he said is the “biggest Taiwanese independence activist,” to keep a clearer head, as his continuous marginalization of Taiwan and military intimidation would only lead more Taiwanese to lean toward independence.
“I give Taiwan 98 percent for its prevention efforts against the novel coronavirus,” Lin said, adding that unlike the 2003 SARS epidemic no deaths or community infections have occurred so far.
“These achievements rank among the best in the world,” Lin added.
Credit for successful disease prevention goes to the government’s strategies and utilization of technology after it set up an infectious disease prevention network after SARS, tightened disease prevention measures at hospitals, conducted annual on-site simulation drills and established virus labs, Lin said.
Taiwan can contribute to global health by lending its experience to developing countries, Lin said.
The WHO on Tuesday officially named the coronavirus, which originated in Wuhan, China, COVID-19.
DIPLOMATIC MOVES: Beijing is reportedly pressing the state after reports of forming links with Taiwan, while the ministry is also planning to reopen its office in Guam soon A representative office is set to open in Somaliland at the end of this month, at the earliest, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday amid reports that Beijing is sending a diplomatic delegation to the east African country. The ministry on July 1 announced that Taiwan and Somaliland would establish representative offices, following a report by the Somaliland Chronicle Web site. It said at the time that the two nations did not plan to establish formal ties. Somaliland President Muse Bihi Abdi has instructed close confidants to explore the possibility of “mutual recognition between Taiwan and Somaliland,” the Somaliland Chronicle reported
‘IMMORAL, INSINCERE’: Huang Kun-huei said that Ma was ‘distorting history’ in claiming that Lee Teng-hui laid the foundation for the so-called ‘1992 consensus’ Former Presidential Office secretary-general Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) on Saturday rejected former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) claim that former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) had been a proponent of Beijing’s “one China” principle. Lee, who served as president from 1988 to 2000, died in Taipei on Thursday last week. After visiting the Taipei Guest House on Saturday to pay his respects to Lee, Ma posted on Facebook that “28 years ago on this day” Lee hosted a session of the now-defunct National Unification Council, during which he passed a resolution on the “one China” principle. That resolution became the basis of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s
NEW ERA: Taiwan, which has controlled its virus outbreak, now faces the challenge of safely resuming economic exchanges with other nations, Chang Shan-chwen said People should not focus entirely on having zero new confirmed COVID-19 cases in Taiwan, but neglect overall control over the disease situation, Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) specialist advisory panel convener Chang Shan-chwen (張上淳) said yesterday. Chang made the remark at a forum in Taipei discussing the steps Taiwan should take in the post-pandemic era, organized by the Chinese-language magazine Global Views Monthly. Chang, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Chou Jih-haw (周志浩), and Stanford University’s Center for Policy, Outcomes and Prevention director C. Jason Wang (王智弘) each made a presentation, followed by a panel discussion with Chang, Wang and Buddhist Tzu
A Belgian man who tested positive for COVID-19 in Taiwan last week is likely to have contracted the disease in Taipei in late June, National Taiwan University (NTU) College of Public Health vice dean Tony Chen (陳秀熙) said yesterday. The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) on Saturday reported that the man, who is in his 20s, came to Taiwan for work on May 3 and tested positive on Wednesday last week as he was about to depart. The man in March reported loss of taste and smell, the center said, adding that he worked in Changhua County, but visited Taipei several times,
RSS