Despite all the efforts to stop its spread, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) may be entering a phase of community transmission in this country. Dr. Lee Ming-liang (
When the first reported SARS cases appeared in early March, all could be linked to travel in China and Hong Kong. The second wave of transmissions came late last month, when mass infections were discovered at Taipei Municipal Hoping Hospital and Jen-chi Hospital. Hoping Hospital's 14-day quarantine period ended Thursday. Some suspected SARS cases that cannot be traced back to the two hospitals continue to emerge. This indicates loopholes in the nation's epidemic-control network.
Taiwan must now prepare for a possible third wave of community transmission. It is better to err on the side of caution than to be overly optimistic as was the case last month.
The next round in the anti-SARS campaign will be very different from the quarantine measures slapped on Hoping and Jen-chi hospitals, where health-care workers were on the front lines of the battle to halt the spread of the virus. In the fight against community transmission, the frontlines can be anywhere -- public venues, offices, factories, even our homes. Everyone needs to work together to maintain those lines regardless of where they live, where they work, or which political party they support. A tiny lapse in vigilance could lead to mass infections such as those that occurred in Hong Kong's Amoy Gardens apartment complex.
President Chen Shui-bian (
Still, support from the military and police is not a decisive factor in this campaign. The most crucial task is to educate the public and to mobilize community and volunteer forces. To limit panic and prepare the public for possible community quarantine measures, the government should publicize information on community-level epidemic control work. The public should also be educated about personal hygiene -- regular epidemic bulletins should be published and regular disinfection rounds should be adopted.
To help ease public anxiety and inconvenience, medical institutions should also make full use of new test kits to shorten the time it takes to determine whether someone has SARS. The health-care network should also maintain its mobility and flexibility in order to tackle contingencies.
This is a fight that no one can avoid. Only united action can ensure victory.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
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