A resolution passed in January by the executive board of the World Health Assembly (WHA), the top decision-making body of the World Health Organization (WHO), might open a window of opportunity for the nation's participation in the health body, officials said.
"The resolution may be advantageous to us," Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Michael Kau (高英茂) said of the resolution on revising the International Health Regulations (IHR) that sailed through the WHA executive board on Jan. 24.
The purpose of IHR, originally known as as the International Sanitary Regulations that were adopted in 1951, is to "ensure the maximum security against the international spread of diseases with minimum interference with world traffic."
The regulations were modified in 1973 and 1981, with a final draft set for adoption in 2005.
A WHA board meeting in January requested the WHO director-general convene an intergovernmental working group on the IHR revision. The resolution also requests the WHO chief to invite representatives of non-member states, liberation movements and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as observers at the sessions of the group meeting.
"This resolution is surely to our advantage," said Chan Chang-chuan (詹長權), professor at the College of Public Health in National Taiwan University.
"The WHO can invite us to be an observer at the WHA any time, but it has seen no urgency in doing so," Chan said. "The outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the IHR revision resolution that was passed in recent months, however, have forced the WHO to handle Taiwan's participation," Chan said.
But the public health professor admitted that the resolution simply "requests" the WHO director-general to invite non-member states to take part as observers in IHR revision discussion groups.
Taiwan in recent years has pushed for its participation as an observer at WHA, although efforts have been thwarted by pressure from China. The fifty-sixth WHA is slated to take place in Geneva from May 19 to 28, where Taiwan's annual bid is scheduled to be put in the spotlight.
Although the WHO Constitution stipulates that WHO membership is limited to sovereign states, the procedural rules of the WHA do not specify qualifications for its observers.
Chan argued that the WHO's push for the IHR revision not only aims at combating new international health risks that go beyond national borders, but reflects the WHO's move to transform itself in order to combat these risks.
"The WHO's handling of the SARS crisis reflects a dilemma. The question for it now is how to deal with countries like China that are far from transparent and are prone to cover-ups in facing disease outbreaks," Chan said.
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