Tom Plate's May 4 article, "A chance for Beijing to take a stand on health," is insightful in that it points out that health, press freedom and, most of all, human consciousness are our most precious assets. There are no national boundaries for epidemics such as SARS and bird flu. They could occur in any country at any time. Fighting them requires international cooperation that includes efforts by journalists to provide timely information on global public health issues.
Plate points out that every additional journalist that covers the World Health Assembly (this week) "is a good thing for the world's public health." Yet, in the past, we have seen that the United Nations has denied accreditation to Taiwanese journalists seeking to cover the assembly due to China's political pressure. As a result, the people in Taiwan do not receive health information that concerns them.
For example, in 2007, China signed a secret memorandum with the Word Health Organization to ask that information from WHO intended for Taiwan go through China first. As a result, China was 10 days late in notifying Taiwan of Thailand's polluted corn product. Our food security was put at risk.
The World Health Assembly's activities have an important bearing on the health and welfare of every person on Earth, which takes precedence over politics. I applaud Plate's courage for pointing out that we must not "not kowtow to Beijing all the time."
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