WHO failed to listen
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
WHO director-general
April 2, 2020
Dear Dr Tedros,
We hope this letter finds you well. We are the presidents of three Taiwanese-American organizations, the North American Taiwanese Medical Association, the Formosan Association for Public Affairs and the North America Taiwanese Professors’ Association.
We welcome the recent decision by the WHO to initiate a public discussion on Taiwan’s participation, after months of silence and your Assistant Director-General Bruce Aylward’s infamous performance during an interview.
We sincerely hope your statement on March 29 can serve as the driving engine for Taiwan’s full participation in the global health body.
However, as concerned civic organizations, we are not convinced of the WHO’s statement that “the question of Taiwanese membership in WHO is up to WHO member states, not WHO staff.”
The WHO’s chief executive agency, the Secretariat, has been unilaterally denying Taiwan’s observer status and membership by distorting the meeting agenda of past annual assemblies. In other words, your WHO staff have been deciding Taiwan’s membership application on behalf of member states.
Taiwan’s participation beyond the annual assembly is also arbitrarily determined by the Secretariat. Of all 187 technical meetings Taiwan has applied to attend since 2009, only 30 percent were approved by your staff.
When the WHO Secretariat has the full authority to invite Taiwan to join, it fails to do so.
Most importantly, we argue that Taiwan’s public health is not a subject to be decided by the WHO Secretariat, nor by the member states. Human rights of 23.5 million Taiwanese should not be put up for a vote.
Discriminating against Taiwan also gravely violates the WHO’s constitution, which states: “The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition.”
Ultimately, we believe that only by correcting the WHO’s past unjust practices could we achieve the objective of “health for all,” especially when Taiwan is a country to give more than to receive. It is in the interests of your WHO and the global community to have a seamless public health network.
The failure to listen and share Taiwan’s early warning about the novel coronavirus on Dec. 31 last year has cost thousands of lives.
We shall not repeat this history again.
Sincerely,
Minze Chien (Ph.D.)
Formosan Association for Public Affairs president
PoFu Hsieh (D.D.S.)
North American Taiwanese Medical Association president
Bill Wu (Pharm.D.)
North America Taiwanese Professors’ Association president
Global water crisis
Sixty-three million people suffer from a lack of clean water resources and every 21 seconds, a child dies from waterborne diseases. To fetch water, women and children in Eswatini have to spend six to eight hours a day walking under the fervent sun, enduring the scorching heat.
These are just a few examples of the 21st-century global water crisis, an ongoing yet hidden tragedy happening around us, in real life.
Living in more developed regions, we have access to clean water around the clock: the incessant running water from the fountain, the sink within a minute’s walk.
Gradually, we take our good fortune of having access to water resources for granted, but little do we know that an entirely opposite phenomenon holds true on the other side of the world, in the rural areas of Eswatini.
Prompted by this, a group of Taiwanese students decided to take action and help promote knowledge about the water crisis.
The students formed the Fuhsing Key Club and started to work with the Thirst Project overseas.
The Thirst Project is a youth water charity organization that raises funds to build wells in countries lacking clean water, such as Eswatini and Uganda, providing a platform for high-school students to raise funds and donate.
After coming across this organization, the Fuhsing Key Club decided to become one of the water-fighters.
They contacted the Thirst Project and received permission to create Thirst Project Asia, a division of the Thirst Project. Since then, they have been posting information about the organization on their Instagram account, thirstproject_asia, including facts about the water crisis, how to raise funds and water-lacking countries.
In addition, they also give fundraising speeches and have set up a booth to raise funds during their school anniversary. This group of Taiwanese students want to contribute a little to the world.
There are ways to help prevent the water crisis other than raising funds: conserving water in our everyday lives, reusing water to water plants and closing the faucet as soon as possible.
The story of these students sets an example: Anyone can make an impact on the environment.
We might not experience the first-hand influence of the water issue, but every effort weights significantly.
Taiwan ranks 19th among the countries that lack clean water resources: if we don’t take action now, we will never know what will happen to our water usage in the future.
Iain Li
Taipei
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