Post by account_disabled on Mar 5, 2024 1:04:49 GMT -5
As the Japanese government counted the cost of postponing the Tokyo Olympics to next year, Taro Aso, the country's deputy prime minister, could not contain his frustration with the World Health Organization (WHO). Preparing for a pandemic of exactly this nature had long been a top priority of the WHO. So why did the organization fail so badly in its test when the moment came? Aso's response was that the WHO had become too close to China. Indeed, he suggested, it should change its name to the Chinese Health Organization. Not only was the previous WHO director-general, Margaret Chan, a Chinese national, but her successor, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Ethiopia's former health minister, was the Chinese-backed candidate. The charge was serious: "From the beginning, if the WHO had not insisted on telling the world that China did not have a pneumonia epidemic, then all countries would have taken precautions," he said on March 28.
Although it was warned in late December Cambodia Telegram Number Data that a new disease had emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the WHO continued to repeat Beijing's assurances that there was nothing to worry about. The WHO was alerted to the problem in Wuhan by a reliable but embarrassing source. Like most international organizations, at China's insistence, the WHO does not include Taiwan as an independent member. That is why those who want proof of Taiwan's performance in the fight against Covid-19 will search in vain on the WHO website. However, as Aso also noted, Taiwan can claim to be a "world leader" in terms of response to the virus, and its impressive record should be recognized by all. By screening people arriving on flights from China and tracing contacts of all known cases, the island nation of about 24 million people has so far limited the number of cases to 363, with five deaths. But this is not a story WHO can tell.
There was an awkward moment in late March when Bruce Aylward, a senior adviser to the WHO, was unable to answer a Hong Kong-based journalist's question about Taiwan because he dared not acknowledged its existence as a separate political entity. This is a familiar problem for international bureaucrats. The embarrassment in this case was that Taiwan had warned the WHO about the problems in Wuhan as early as the end of December, and especially about the possibility of human-to-human transmission. This contradicted efforts made by local Communist Party officials to cover up the news and warn those doctors who spoke out. But by the beginning of this year, the news was coming out in different ways, and not just through Taiwan.
Although it was warned in late December Cambodia Telegram Number Data that a new disease had emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the WHO continued to repeat Beijing's assurances that there was nothing to worry about. The WHO was alerted to the problem in Wuhan by a reliable but embarrassing source. Like most international organizations, at China's insistence, the WHO does not include Taiwan as an independent member. That is why those who want proof of Taiwan's performance in the fight against Covid-19 will search in vain on the WHO website. However, as Aso also noted, Taiwan can claim to be a "world leader" in terms of response to the virus, and its impressive record should be recognized by all. By screening people arriving on flights from China and tracing contacts of all known cases, the island nation of about 24 million people has so far limited the number of cases to 363, with five deaths. But this is not a story WHO can tell.
There was an awkward moment in late March when Bruce Aylward, a senior adviser to the WHO, was unable to answer a Hong Kong-based journalist's question about Taiwan because he dared not acknowledged its existence as a separate political entity. This is a familiar problem for international bureaucrats. The embarrassment in this case was that Taiwan had warned the WHO about the problems in Wuhan as early as the end of December, and especially about the possibility of human-to-human transmission. This contradicted efforts made by local Communist Party officials to cover up the news and warn those doctors who spoke out. But by the beginning of this year, the news was coming out in different ways, and not just through Taiwan.