Taiwan has not received an invitation to attend the annual World Health Assembly (WHA) this year, Minister of Health and Welfare Hsueh Jui-yuan (薛瑞元) said yesterday.
Hopefully, friendly countries can help the nation participate in international events to counter “unfair treatment.”
The WHA, the WHO’s decisionmaking body, is scheduled to meet from May 21 to 30 in Geneva, Switzerland.
Photo: AP
Hsueh wrote two opinion editorials published last week in the US media outlet The Diplomat and Swedish newspaper Nerikes Allehanda, regarding Taiwan’s efforts in global public health and its ability to contribute further.
His goal in writing the articles was to help obtain support from like-minded countries to receive an invitation to the WHA, Hsueh said.
“Taiwan is an indispensable part of the global public health system and many countries know it, but Taiwan is being neglected by the WHO, which is unfair treatment,” Hsueh said.
“We hope that through the help of friendly countries, Taiwan can receive more opportunities to participate internationally,” he added.
Hsueh is scheduled to lead a delegation to Geneva on May 19 to express the government’s desire to join the WHA as an observer, as well to participate in WHO meetings, mechanisms and activities.
The delegation is expected to include former National Health Research Institutes (NHRI) president Liang Kung-yee (梁賡義), NHRI president Sytwu Huey-kang (司徒惠康), National Health Insurance Administration director-general Shih Chung-liang (石崇良), and Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞).
Meanwhile yesterday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a promotional video titled The Doctor is In, presenting Taiwan’s contributions to global public health, and calling for Taiwan’s inclusion in this year’s WHA and WHO mechanisms.
The video cited examples of Taiwan’s contributions, including donations to hospitals in Ukraine, as well as centers for pediatric cardiology and cardiac surgery.
The video shows that the Taiwan International Healthcare Training Center has trained more than 2,000 healthcare professionals from 77 countries in the past 20 years.
It also shows that Taiwan has been providing several medical and technical services to African countries since the 1950s, helping its friends and allies maintain maternal and child health, and reducing the continent’s early neonatal mortality rate by 1 percent.
The words “Taiwan Can Help” and “Let Taiwan Help” are shown at the end of the video.
The video has been subtitled in several languages and is available on the ministry’s YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Instagram and Twitter accounts, the foreign ministry said, adding that people are encouraged to share it with the world.
Separately, the Hungarian Momentum Movement party last month sent a letter to the WHO calling for Taiwan’s participation in the WHA, marking the first time a Hungarian political party has made such a statement without objection.
Momentum, which was formed in 2016 and became a political party in 2017, won seats in the Hungarian National Assembly for the first time in April last year. It is now the nation’s second-largest opposition party with 10 seats out of 199.
In a statement announcing the letter on Friday last week, the party called for Taiwan’s membership in the WHO, and for the nation to be invited as an observer during the upcoming WHA.
Additional reporting by CNA
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS