Taiwan’s reported hepatitis C “elimination” achievement is a genuine public health milestone, but also a useful moment to ask whether Taiwan wants a certificate, a culture change or both. The best way to honor the accomplishment is to treat it less like crossing the finish line and more like learning a new operating system for health policy.
Taiwan has earned the right to celebrate. President William Lai (賴清德) and health officials have said the nation would seek WHO recognition after reaching the global body’s hepatitis C elimination benchmark five years ahead of the 2030 target. With expanded access to direct-acting antivirals (DAAs), more than 176,000 people have reportedly been treated, with a 98 percent success rate.
The bigger story is not that Taiwan “beat” hepatitis C; it is that Taiwan demonstrated the ability to convert biomedical certainty into administrative certainty.
DAAs are safe, effective and short-course. The hard part is not the pill, it is building a system that reliably finds people, links them to care, funds treatment, tracks outcomes and keeps returning to the places where infection is most concentrated.
The less-glamorous ingredients are what made elimination plausible: the integration of hepatitis B and C screening into publicly funded programs and the National Health Insurance system; making local governments accountable for tracking cases; performance management that makes gaps visible; and targeted outreach to communities that are routinely missed by the traditional healthcare system.
Taiwan did public health the difficult way: by engineering delivery.
That is why the most balanced reading of “elimination” is not that the race is over, but that the work would continue. “Elimination” as the WHO defines it is a public-health target, not a declaration that transmission has vanished. If the story becomes “mission accomplished,” resources drift, attention shifts and the process stalls.
One detail deserves more attention than it usually gets: correctional facilities. Screening and treatment in prisons acknowledges what many countries avoid saying aloud — neglecting high-prevalence settings can reseed community transmission.
While recognition from the WHO can be valuable, it should never be a substitute for domestic transparency. The public deserves a plain-language accounting of what is being measured: What counts as diagnosed, treated, cured and followed? What data sources were used? How were hard-to-reach populations counted?
Three pragmatic moves would keep the success real:
First, publish a simple, auditable methods appendix alongside elimination claims so the public can understand the denominator, not just celebrate the numerator.
Second, lock in correctional screening and continuity of care as permanent policy, because prisons can become a recurring ignition point if neglected.
Third, pair treatment with stigma-reducing services and practical access. “Cure” is a clinical endpoint; elimination is a social and operational one.
Taiwan should resist the temptation to treat elimination as the end of the story. Globally, only a minority of people with hepatitis C have historically been diagnosed and treated. Taiwan’s progress is remarkable, but it is also a chance for the nation to lead with humility by sharing what failed, what was challenging and what remains unfinished. That honesty is how other countries learn, and how Taiwan sustains its achievement at home.
If Taipei wants a slogan for this moment, it should not be “We eliminated hepatitis C.” It should be: “We built a state that can find you, treat you and find the next person — especially the people most likely to be missed.”
Y. Tony Yang is an endowed professor at George Washington University.
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