After the nation's entry into the WTO earlier this month, the Executive Yuan approved on Wednesday a list of agricultural and industrial products for which Taiwan will be open to imports from China. Among the 2,126 items on the list, 901 are agricultural products. The number is almost twice the number of agricultural products for which importation is currently permissible. The new measure will come into effect on Feb. 15.
Ironically, just two days before Taiwan made this goodwill gesture to China, the World Health Organization's (WHO) executive board in Geneva once again killed a motion to put Taiwan's observer status on the provisional agenda for the World Health Assembly (WHA). As a result, Taiwan continues to be excluded from the international public health community.
Public health issues -- such as AIDS, mad cow disease, foot-and-mouth disease and even anthrax infections -- have become a common concern for people across the globe. The danger of communicable diseases to public health is simply too great. Therefore, the prevention, treatment and tracking of communicable diseases have long transcended national and racial boundaries.
However, as of today, Taiwan continues to be shut out of the WHO's door due to the obstruction of communist China. Don't the lives and health of Taiwanese matter? Shouldn't international organizations provide information to them for disease prevention and treatment? Are the lives of the 23 million people in Taiwan less valuable than the 1.3 billion in China?
PRC President Jiang Zemin (
If one day a new type of communicable disease breaks out in Taiwan, will international organizations such as the WHO continue to refuse give a helping hand? Will the international community stand by to watch the people of Taiwan suffer and the disease spread to all over the world?
Five years ago, Taiwan had an outbreak of FMD among pigs and, in recent years, many other Asian countries also had a similar experience. Taiwan's experience in handling the FMD outbreak should have been of much value to these other countries. However, Taiwan's information on FMD prevention and treatment was incapable of being provided through the relevant international organization to these other countries.
Look at the experience of Hong Kong. Both before and after Hong Kong's handover to China, it was suffering from an outbreak of chicken flu, making people of Hong Kong fearful at the mere sight of chickens. Since China's public health conditions are a lot more backward than that of Taiwan's, opening up to agricultural imports from China creates serious health risks. If the chicken flu nightmare of Hong Kong is repeated in Taiwan, people on the two sides of the Strait will both suffer. How to prevent problems of this nature is an issue that Taiwan government must seriously consider.
According to a Department of Health plan, Taiwan will donate US$1 million to UN's new Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, so as to make its contribution to the international health community. Taiwan is ready to shoulder its share of the responsibility in the international community. If China is civilized and reasonable enough, it should stop boycotting Taiwan's entry into the WHO. Otherwise, such behavior will sooner or later be loathed by the international community.
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