The Council of Agriculture is today to inaugurate a center for laboratory proficiency testing for rabies diagnoses — the first of its kind in Asia authorized by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), officials said yesterday.
The center is being established under the council’s Animal Health Research Institute, according to a statement.
The center’s opening is to be attended by OIE regional representative for Asia and the Pacific Hirofumi Kugita, experts from France, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines, as well as local officials, the council said.
The establishment of the center is significant because it is the first in Asia, showing that Taiwan plays a vital role in the world’s shared objective of eradicating rabies by 2030, institute section chief Tseng Chun-hsien (曾俊憲) said.
The institute since 2014 has been working with the Nancy Laboratory for Rabies and Wildlife in France — the world’s leading laboratory for monitoring wildlife health — studying the pathogenic agents of rabies mediated by ferret-badgers.
Another collaborative project between the two was approved by OIE in June, Tseng said.
While other Asian nations, such as China and Japan, had also expressed their intention to have the center established in their nations, the OIE chose Taiwan after confirming that the nation’s disease control techniques and policies meet its expectations, he said.
In addition to elevating the nation’s leverage on the global stage, the center would introduce disease management systems from the EU, he said, adding that it would help other Asian nations establish testing standards for rabies.
Rabies can be transmitted between animals and humans, and it causes acute inflammation of the brain and the central nervous system, making animals more aggressive, but vaccination can prevent infection.
Most of the nation’s rabies cases occur in wild animals, especially ferret-badgers, and the disease had spread to 84 townships as of last month, data showed.
A magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck off Taitung County at 1:09pm today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The hypocenter was 53km northeast of Taitung County Hall at a depth of 12.5km, CWA data showed. The intensity of the quake, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, measured 4 in Taitung County and Hualien County on Taiwan's seven-tier intensity scale, the data showed. The quake had an intensity of 3 in Nantou County, Chiayi County, Yunlin County, Kaohsiung and Tainan, the data showed. There were no immediate reports of damage following the quake.
A BETRAYAL? It is none of the ministry’s business if those entertainers love China, but ‘you cannot agree to wipe out your own country,’ the MAC minister said Taiwanese entertainers in China would have their Taiwanese citizenship revoked if they are holding Chinese citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. Several Taiwanese entertainers, including Patty Hou (侯佩岑) and Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜), earlier this month on their Weibo (微博) accounts shared a picture saying that Taiwan would be “returned” to China, with tags such as “Taiwan, Province of China” or “Adhere to the ‘one China’ principle.” The MAC would investigate whether those Taiwanese entertainers have Chinese IDs and added that it would revoke their Taiwanese citizenship if they did, Chiu told the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper
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