Shouldn't be playing politics with Taiwan's health

Shouldn't be playing politics with Taiwan's health

By Dr. PALMER BEASLEY

When the World Health Organization was chartered by the United Nations in 1948, its mission was to promote cooperation for health throughout the world, to help prevent and control disease, and to improve the quality of human life. Those are lofty goals that are extremely important.

However, when the WHO's World Health Assembly gathered in Geneva this month, not all of the peoples of the world were represented. Since the early 1970s, the government of Taiwan has been barred from participation -- even as an observer -- in the WHO, and once again its efforts to gain observer status were thwarted.

This issue is of particular importance to me because I spent 14 years living and working in Taipei, where I and my Taiwanese colleagues conducted extensive research on Hepatitis B and helped develop effective vaccines for the disease. As a result, Taiwan has one of the most advanced Hepatitis B control programs in the world, the result of which will be dramatic reductions in liver cancer in decades to come.

I fully recognize that Taiwan's status in any number of organizations is clouded by the long-standing tensions between it and the Peoples Republic of China. Those issues will not be magically resolved any time soon, and certainly not by members of the public health and medical professions. Yet the issue of Taiwan's ability to participate as an observer to the WHO should not be mingled with its political status. Statehood is hardly a requirement for observer status at the WHO. In fact, the Order of Malta, the Palestine Liberation Organization and even Rotary International have all been granted observer status. As a question of basic fairness, the people of Taiwan deserve a similar chair.

The question of access to the WHO is not just an arcane geopolitical debate. Without WHO observer status, the 23 million people of Taiwan -- a population larger than three-quarters of the member states of the WHO -- are denied access to international health benefits afforded to nearly everybody else around the globe. Why should parents -- in any country -- have to wonder whether their infants might have fared better had their governments been given access to all of the medical tools available through the WHO?

But Taiwan is a case in point that membership in the World Health Organization is not a one-way street. Member nations not only receive medical assistance for potential health epidemics, but they also share their medical knowledge accumulated from health issues specific to their own population and location. When WHO nations suffer from disease outbreaks with which they have limited experience, they can call on the resources and experts of other member countries who may be more familiar with those diseases. Denying membership to any nation not only hurts that country, but it may also deprive other WHO members which may need that expertise.

The Bush administration, with the blessing of Congress, has a chance to rectify the situation. In a letter to Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, last year, President Bush stated that the United States "should find opportunities for Taiwan's voice to be heard in international organizations in order to make a contribution, even if membership is not possible." Congress this year, for the second time, passed a bill authorizing the State Department to put together a plan to endorse and obtain observer status for Taiwan at the Geneva meeting.

Infectious diseases do not respect politically driven distinctions or national borders. If there are virulent new flu strains in Taiwan, they can easily reach the United States. It is unfair to allow Taiwan or any country to be isolated by politics when it comes to the health and welfare of its population, any more than we can pretend that we are immune from the international spread of infectious disease.

Beasley is dean of the University of Texas-Houston School of Public Health.

Please take one minute to logon the following website to sign your name for the petition of Taiwan to join WHO. Thanks.