Taipei yesterday blasted China for endangering the health of Taiwanese and compromising global epidemic prevention by blocking it from the WHO, as it hopes to attend a major meeting next month.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday accused China of having a “secret arrangement” with the WHO, granting Beijing power to veto its attendance even at smaller technical briefings.
Out of the 154 WHO briefings that Taiwan applied for from 2009 to last year, only 46 were approved, the ministry said in a statement.
It also said China had delayed timely notification of health information to Taiwan.
“The unilateral arrangement between China and the WHO not only poses a threat to the health of the Taiwanese people, but it also causes a loophole in global epidemic prevention,” it said.
The comments came in response to a statement on Wednesday from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO), which said that Taiwanese experts were free to attend WHO conferences aside from the World Health Assembly (WHA) and were still receiving timely information on disease prevention.
The ministry said the TAO statement was “untrue.”
Despite intensified lobbying efforts this year, the ministry earlier this week said it was not optimistic that it would receive an invitation to the WHA meeting scheduled for May 21 to May 26.
“The WHO faces a lot of pressure and we are all very clear where that pressure comes from,” Department of International Organizations Director-General Michael Hsu (徐佩勇) said.
A number of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies have written to the WHO urging the nation’s admittance, while US senators this month called on the US secretary of state to develop a strategy to help Taiwan regain “observer” status.
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