Representatives from Taiwan, Australia, Japan, the UK and the US on Tuesday met virtually for a Global Cooperation and Training Framework workshop on COVID-19 vaccine rollouts, with experts calling for fair access to vaccines.
The workshop’s cohosts and partners have increased since the framework was initiated by Taiwan and the US in 2015.
Tuesday’s event was attended by 135 officials and experts from 36 countries, including Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮), American Institute in Taiwan Director Brent Christensen, Japanese Representative to Taiwan Hiroyasu Izumi, British Representative to Taiwan John Dennis and Australian Representative to Taiwan Jenny Bloomfield, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a news release yesterday.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs via CNA
Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Hsueh Jui-yuan (薛瑞元) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Chou Jih-haw (周志浩) also attended the meeting.
Hsueh and Chou in their speeches emphasized that the best way to curb the COVID-19 pandemic is to ensure that all countries have fair access to effective vaccines, the CDC said.
Participants discussed the distribution of different COVID-19 vaccines, their delivery and cooling logistics, inoculation priorities, adverse reactions, and people’s hesitancy to get vaccinated, the CDC said.
“No country can beat the pandemic alone, we must all work together,” Christensen said in his speech.
“These are difficult times and talking about COVID-19 vaccines can be a sensitive subject, but just because this is a challenging topic, does not mean that health experts cannot build connections and work on ways to move forward,” he said.
Christensen also reiterated the call for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in the World Health Assembly (WHA), saying that excluding the nation compromises global health and safety.
The WHA, the decisionmaking body of the WHO, is to meet virtually from Monday next week to June 1. Taiwan participated in the assembly as an observer from 2009 to 2016, but has since been denied entry.
Despite the government’s appeal to the WHO Secretariat, it did not extend an invitation to Taiwan due to China’s obstruction, the ministry said.
The ministry has asked its diplomatic allies to tender a proposal pushing for Taiwan’s WHA bid and to urge the WHO Secretariat to list the proposal as a supplementary item to the assembly’s agenda, it said.
The ministry would continue to hold events advocating “Taiwan can help,” including an online seminar on strengthening public health systems during the pandemic hosted by the International Cooperation and Development Fund on Tuesday next week.
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