Taiwan and the US are to hold a workshop next week in Taiwan focusing on the testing and diagnosis of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said yesterday.
The workshop, which is to be attended by experts from the Asia-Pacific region, is to take place in Tainan from Aug. 12 to 14, and four disease control experts from the US are to give presentations, Department of Foreign Affairs Director-General said Christine Hsueh (薛美瑜)said.
“About 20 experts from Japan, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines are to attend the workshop,” she said.
The workshop comes after the South Korean government late last month declared an end to a MERS outbreak that killed 36 people in that country. South Korea reported its first confirmed case of MERS in late May, after a 68-year-old man who had visited several Middle Eastern countries presented with the illness.
Although no MERS cases have been reported in Taiwan, the country has taken a series of precautionary measures aimed at preventing and combating MERS.
The workshop is the first program since Taiwan and the US signed a memorandum of understanding June 1 to extend the two countries’ cooperation in international public health and other issues of mutual concern.
The memorandum came with the launch of the Global Cooperation and Training Framework, which offers a good platform for Taiwan and the US to work closely in areas of global health, environmental protection, science and technology, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, Coordination Council for North American Affairs Chairwoman Chang Hsiao-yueh (張小月) said during the signing ceremony.
In March, Taiwan and the US also launched a program in Tainan to train medical personnel in the Asia-Pacific region to combat the Ebola virus, which has killed more than 10,000 people in West Africa.
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