More than 80 percent of Taiwanese support the country's bid to participate in the WHO, while 78 percent support a bid to join the organization under the name of Taiwan, a leading non-profit medical organization reported yesterday.
Over 71 percent of Taiwanese citizens support the nation's application for full WHO membership, while 12.3 percent said it was enough that Taiwan strives to obtain observer status in the World Health Assembly (WHA), the top decision-making body of the WHO.
The poll was released yesterday by the Foundation of Medical Professionals' Alliance in Taiwan. A total of 1,114 people were polled, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.94 percent.
"We have been frustrated because we want to apply for full membership in the WHO. Yet the government has many concerns and has only applied for observer status in the WHA, although we can understand why," the foundation's president Wu Shuh-min (吳樹民) said.
"The Taiwanese government should review what we have achieved with our efforts to join the WHO over the past 10 years. The only thing we have achieved now is to form a public consensus on joining the WHO, but we have not progressed at all internationally," Wu said.
The poll also showed 53.1 percent said China's opposition to Taiwan's joining the WHO amid the global threat of bird flu will hurt cross-strait relations.
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