Taipei complains to World Health Organisation after coronavirus case is classed as ‘Taiwan, China’
- Island’s representative office in Geneva instructed to ‘issue a solemn protest to WHO secretary general … demand a correction’, foreign ministry says
- Global health body’s actions effectively putting the health of 23 million people in Taiwan at risk, it says
Although the self-ruled island is not a member of the WHO, it said it filed the report through its channel to the organisation on Tuesday.
But when the WHO released its latest figures on the spread of the virus – which it had earlier named 2019-nCoV – it referred to Taipei’s report as a case from “Taiwan, China,” according to the island’s foreign ministry.
“In announcing its report on the latest condition of the novel coronavirus, the WHO has improperly placed the confirmed case from Taiwan under the ‘Taiwan, China’ category,” it said in a statement on Thursday.
“And for this, the ministry has instructed its representative office in Geneva to issue a solemn protest to WHO secretary general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and demand a correction.
“As the international health body, the WHO should have resisted political pressure and maintained a neutral stand in consolidating the WHO charters of upholding the highest standards of human health worldwide instead of bowing to unreasonable demands from China that Taiwan can only be included after it accepts the one-China principle,” the ministry said.
The WHO’s action effectively put the health of 23 million people in Taiwan at risk, the statement said.
