If the WHO is serious about its goal of “Health for All,” it would allow Taiwan to attend all of its meetings, Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said yesterday.
Taiwan is excluded from most international organizations because of objections by China.
The WHO’s director-general should take the initiative to invite Taiwan to attend this month’s World Health Assembly (WHA) as an observer, Wu said at the legislature in Taipei.
Photo: CNA
The WHO should also “let Taiwan fully participate in all the WHO’s meetings, activities and systems, to put into effect the WHO’s charter that health is a basic human right and achieve at an early date its goal of ‘Health for All,’” he said.
Taiwan faces a “very high level of difficulty” in taking part in this year’s WHA, he told reporters later, but added that the nation is winning support from countries for its bid to be invited.
The WHO said in an e-mailed statement that Taiwan’s observer status at the WHA is a question for the WHO’s 194 member states to decide.
“Irrespective of governance questions, WHO attaches importance to its ongoing technical work with Taiwanese health experts,” it said. “The WHO secretariat facilitates the involvement of Taiwanese experts in WHO technical activities.”
Earlier this month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the US “strongly encourages” the WHO to reinstate an invitation for Taiwan to attend as an observer.
This year’s WHA is to start on May 27, just a week after president-elect William Lai (賴清德) takes office.
Taiwan, which is allowed to attend some technical WHO meetings, said that its exclusion hindered efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
In other news, leaders of the nation’s 21 medical professional groups headed by the Taiwan Medical Association called on the WHO to invite Taiwan to attend this year’s WHA.
“When Taiwan gets to participate, the WHO can fulfill its motto of ‘Health for All,’” minister of health and welfare-designate Chiu Tai-yuan (邱泰源) told a news conference in Taipei. “We have an important role to play and must not be absent from the main meeting of worldwide health communities.”
Taiwan is known for its high-quality healthcare and effective results in combating global pandemics,” Chiu said, adding that it has provided medical support around the globe for many years.
The France-based World Medical Association has written letters for the past few years urging WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to allow Taiwan to attend the WHA, Chiu said.
The letters described Taiwan as a top student denied access to the classroom, he said.
“Taiwan must work diligently ... to gain more international support,” he said.
“We have 360,000 hardworking medical and nursing personnel in Taiwan,” Taiwan Medical Association chairman Chou Ching-ming (周慶明) said. “The nation’s talented medical and health personnel keep up to date on the latest technical advances and are happy to share their successes and experience with the world.”
A Taiwanese delegation of medical professionals is to travel to Geneva to hold an international conference while the WHA is held in the Swiss city, the association said.
The conference is to address the polices and implementation of an integrated national medical system, it said.
Taiwan attended the WHA as an observer from 2009 to 2016 under the administration of then-President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), but Beijing began blocking Taiwan’s participation in 2017 after then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took office.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office on Monday said it was the fault of the Democratic Progressive Party that Taiwan could not attend the WHA, given what it called a “lack of a political basis.”
Taipei says Beijing has no right to speak for or represent it on the international stage.
UNITED: The premier said Trump’s tariff comments provided a great opportunity for the private and public sectors to come together to maintain the nation’s chip advantage The government is considering ways to assist the nation’s semiconductor industry or hosting collaborative projects with the private sector after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on chips exported to the US, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. Trump on Monday told Republican members of the US Congress about plans to impose sweeping tariffs on semiconductors, steel, aluminum, copper and pharmaceuticals “in the very near future.” “It’s time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before,” Trump said at the Republican Issues Conference in Miami, Florida. “They
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
TAIWAN DEFENSE: The initiative would involve integrating various systems in a fast-paced manner through the use of common software to obstruct a Chinese invasion The first tranche of the US Navy’s “Replicator” initiative aimed at obstructing a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be ready by August, a US Naval Institute (USNI) News report on Tuesday said. The initiative is part of a larger defense strategy for Taiwan, and would involve launching thousands of uncrewed submarines, surface vessels and aerial vehicles around Taiwan to buy the nation and its partners time to assemble a response. The plan was first made public by the Washington Post in June last year, when it cited comments by US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue
MARITIME SECURITY: Of the 52 vessels, 15 were rated a ‘threat’ for various reasons, including the amount of time they spent loitering near subsea cables, the CGA said Taiwan has identified 52 “suspicious” Chinese-owned ships flying flags of convenience that require close monitoring if detected near the nation, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday, as the nation seeks to protect its subsea telecoms cables. The stricter regime comes after a Cameroon-flagged vessel was briefly detained by the CGA earlier this month on suspicion of damaging an international cable northeast of Taiwan. The vessel is owned by a Hong Kong-registered company with a Chinese address given for its only listed director, the CGA said previously. Taiwan fears China could sever its communication links as part of an attempt
RSS