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Strategic Vision vol. 9, no. 45 (March, 2020)
Good Graces
COVID-19 provides opportunity to highlight Taiwan’s healthcare proficiency Ruei-lin Yu
T
he international community of nations should recall Taiwan’s contributions in dealing with the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003, and recognize Taiwan’s knowledge and experience in managing such pandemics as they seek a strategy to protect the world’s populations from the current outbreak of COVID-19. Taiwan’s National Health Insurance (NHI) system has been deemed among the best in the world. It was rated as the best in the world by the CEOWORLD magazine Health Care Index in 2019. The editors took into account the overall quality of healthcare, including the infrastructure, staff competency, cost, availability and government readiness, in making their ranking. In short: Taiwan is more than capable of using its experience and expertise to
photo: Yann Forget World Health Organization Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
support all states in the fight against the COVID-19 outbreak. In 2009, Taiwan was invited by the World Health Organization (WHO) to participate as an observer in its World Health Assembly (WHA). China wields great influence in the WHO, and allowed this to happen in order to help boost the popularity of their preferred candidate, the Kuomintang’s (KMT) Ma Ying-jeou, after he was elected president of Taiwan in 2008. In 2017, after the KMT lost power to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), China pressured the WHO into rescinding that arrangement. China’s motivation for blocking Taiwan’s participation was because the DPP leader, President Tsai Ing-wen, refuses to embrace either the so-called 92 Consensus or the “one country, two systems” mod-
Dr. Ruei-lin Yu is a professor at the ROC National Defense University.