【嚴正抗議 我國未獲邀出席WHA】
第74屆「世界衛生大會」(WHA)線上會議今天(5/24)開議,我國未獲邀以觀察員身分出席。外交部吳部長及衛福部陳部長共同表達我國政府嚴正不滿的抗議立場,並強調政府及全民持續積極爭取參與的堅定決心,同時也向國際社會對我國參與的強勁支持,表達誠摯謝意。
包括WHO在內的聯合國體系一再強調「不遺漏任何人」(Leave no one behind)的崇高目標,全球防疫不應有缺口,「世界衛生組織」(WHO)秘書處卻漠視2,350萬台灣人民的健康人權,也忽視國際挺台的聲音。健康是基本人權、普世價值,作為專業國際醫衛組織,WHO應為全人類健康福祉服務,不應屈從於特定會員的政治利益。
台灣未受邀參與WHA,不僅是台灣的損失,也是世界的損失,外交部呼籲WHO堅守專業中立,摒除中國政治干預,基於維護全人類福祉及共同抗疫的考量,早日讓台灣參與WHO各項會議、機制及活動,與全球共同促進人類的健康與安全。
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MOFA would like to protest in the strongest terms its exclusion—even as an observer—from the 74th World Health Assembly which kicks off today.
MOFA Minister Joseph Wu protested the decision alongside Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung, stating that the government and the people of #Taiwan will persevere in asserting their right to attend, while thanking all those in the international community who support Taiwan’s inclusion.
The UN system, including the WHO, continues to emphasize the ultimate goal of leaving no one behind, so that there might be no gap in global pandemic-prevention efforts; however the WHO ignores the rights of the 23.5 million Taiwanese people to health, as well as the international support for Taiwan’s participation. Health is a #HumanRight and as a professional organization dealing with #PublicHealth, the WHO should concern itself with the health and welfare of all mankind, instead of putting #PoliticsBeforeHealth.
Taiwan’s exclusion is not just a loss for Taiwan, but also a loss for the wider world, and MOFA asks that the WHO maintain professional neutrality, instead of ceding to political interference from the PRC.
#WHA74 #EndThisPandemic
welfare loss 在 Roger Chung 鍾一諾 Facebook 的精選貼文
今早為Asian Medical Students Association Hong Kong (AMSAHK)的新一屆執行委員會就職典禮作致詞分享嘉賓,題目為「疫情中的健康不公平」。
感謝他們的熱情款待以及為整段致詞拍了影片。以下我附上致詞的英文原稿:
It's been my honor to be invited to give the closing remarks for the Inauguration Ceremony for the incoming executive committee of the Asian Medical Students' Association Hong Kong (AMSAHK) this morning. A video has been taken for the remarks I made regarding health inequalities during the COVID-19 pandemic (big thanks to the student who withstood the soreness of her arm for holding the camera up for 15 minutes straight), and here's the transcript of the main body of the speech that goes with this video:
//The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, continues to be rampant around the world since early 2020, resulting in more than 55 million cases and 1.3 million deaths worldwide as of today. (So no! It’s not a hoax for those conspiracy theorists out there!) A higher rate of incidence and deaths, as well as worse health-related quality of life have been widely observed in the socially disadvantaged groups, including people of lower socioeconomic position, older persons, migrants, ethnic minority and communities of color, etc. While epidemiologists and scientists around the world are dedicated in gathering scientific evidence on the specific causes and determinants of the health inequalities observed in different countries and regions, we can apply the Social Determinants of Health Conceptual Framework developed by the World Health Organization team led by the eminent Prof Sir Michael Marmot, world’s leading social epidemiologist, to understand and delineate these social determinants of health inequalities related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to this framework, social determinants of health can be largely categorized into two types – 1) the lower stream, intermediary determinants, and 2) the upper stream, structural and macro-environmental determinants. For the COVID-19 pandemic, we realized that the lower stream factors may include material circumstances, such as people’s living and working conditions. For instance, the nature of the occupations of these people of lower socioeconomic position tends to require them to travel outside to work, i.e., they cannot work from home, which is a luxury for people who can afford to do it. This lack of choice in the location of occupation may expose them to greater risk of infection through more transportation and interactions with strangers. We have also seen infection clusters among crowded places like elderly homes, public housing estates, and boarding houses for foreign domestic helpers. Moreover, these socially disadvantaged people tend to have lower financial and social capital – it can be observed that they were more likely to be deprived of personal protective equipment like face masks and hand sanitizers, especially during the earlier days of the pandemic. On the other hand, the upper stream, structural determinants of health may include policies related to public health, education, macroeconomics, social protection and welfare, as well as our governance… and last, but not least, our culture and values. If the socioeconomic and political contexts are not favorable to the socially disadvantaged, their health and well-being will be disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Therefore, if we, as a society, espouse to address and reduce the problem of health inequalities, social determinants of health cannot be overlooked in devising and designing any public health-related strategies, measures and policies.
Although a higher rate of incidence and deaths have been widely observed in the socially disadvantaged groups, especially in countries with severe COVID-19 outbreaks, this phenomenon seems to be less discussed and less covered by media in Hong Kong, where the disease incidence is relatively low when compared with other countries around the world. Before the resurgence of local cases in early July, local spread of COVID-19 was sporadic and most cases were imported. In the earlier days of the pandemic, most cases were primarily imported by travelers and return-students studying overseas, leading to a minor surge between mid-March and mid-April of 874 new cases. Most of these cases during Spring were people who could afford to travel and study abroad, and thus tended to be more well-off. Therefore, some would say the expected social gradient in health impact did not seem to exist in Hong Kong, but may I remind you that, it is only the case when we focus on COVID-19-specific incidence and mortality alone. But can we really deduce from this that COVID-19-related health inequality does not exist in Hong Kong? According to the Social Determinants of Health Framework mentioned earlier, the obvious answer is “No, of course not.” And here’s why…
In addition to the direct disease burden, the COVID-19 outbreak and its associated containment measures (such as economic lockdown, mandatory social distancing, and change of work arrangements) could have unequal wider socioeconomic impacts on the general population, especially in regions with pervasive existing social inequalities. Given the limited resources and capacity of the socioeconomically disadvantaged to respond to emergency and adverse events, their general health and well-being are likely to be unduly and inordinately affected by the abrupt changes in their daily economic and social conditions, like job loss and insecurity, brought about by the COVID-19 outbreak and the corresponding containment and mitigation measures of which the main purpose was supposedly disease prevention and health protection at the first place. As such, focusing only on COVID-19 incidence or mortality as the outcomes of concern to address health inequalities may leave out important aspects of life that contributes significantly to people’s health. Recently, my research team and I collaborated with Sir Michael Marmot in a Hong Kong study, and found that the poor people in Hong Kong fared worse in every aspects of life than their richer counterparts in terms of economic activity, personal protective equipment, personal hygiene practice, as well as well-being and health after the COVID-19 outbreak. We also found that part of the observed health inequality can be attributed to the pandemic and its related containment measures via people’s concerns over their own and their families’ livelihood and economic activity. In other words, health inequalities were contributed by the pandemic even in a city where incidence is relatively low through other social determinants of health that directly concerned the livelihood and economic activity of the people. So in this study, we confirmed that focusing only on the incident and death cases as the outcomes of concern to address health inequalities is like a story half-told, and would severely truncate and distort the reality.
Truth be told, health inequality does not only appear after the pandemic outbreak of COVID-19, it is a pre-existing condition in countries and regions around the world, including Hong Kong. My research over the years have consistently shown that people in lower socioeconomic position tend to have worse physical and mental health status. Nevertheless, precisely because health inequality is nothing new, there are always voices in our society trying to dismiss the problem, arguing that it is only natural to have wealth inequality in any capitalistic society. However, in reckoning with health inequalities, we need to go beyond just figuring out the disparities or differences in health status between the poor and the rich, and we need to raise an ethically relevant question: are these inequalities, disparities and differences remediable? Can they be fixed? Can we do something about them? If they are remediable, and we can do something about them but we haven’t, then we’d say these inequalities are ultimately unjust and unfair. In other words, a society that prides itself in pursuing justice must, and I say must, strive to address and reduce these unfair health inequalities. Borrowing the words from famed sociologist Judith Butler, “the virus alone does not discriminate,” but “social and economic inequality will make sure that it does.” With COVID-19, we learn that it is not only the individuals who are sick, but our society. And it’s time we do something about it.
Thank you very much!//
Please join me in congratulating the incoming executive committee of AMSAHK and giving them the best wishes for their future endeavor!
Roger Chung, PhD
Assistant Professor, CUHK JC School of Public Health and Primary Care, @CUHK Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong 香港中文大學 - CUHK
Associate Director, CUHK Institute of Health Equity
welfare loss 在 李怡 Facebook 的最佳解答
Battle between Freedom and Equality | Lee Yee
A netizen left a comment under my article from a couple of days ago, and said that if Trump is re-elected, he would turn “dictatorial”, and pursue “Trump thinking as mainstream”. He said that he “divides the United States and gave birth to racism, white nationalism, and xenophobia”, which is disastrous to human civilization, etc.
Under the constitutional system of the United States, one will have to step down after one re-election, and there is no way to bring about a dictatorship. Moreover, just look at all the stormy attacks mainstream media throws towards him, how is one to become a dictator? In a multicultural America, how could any almighty notion exist? As for racism and xenophobia, the cited example is him crowning the novel coronavirus “Chinese virus”, and the media claimed that this has caused a sharp increase in anti-Chinese speech online. But the virus did originate in China, did it not?
Other than the infiltration of Chinese interests that drove the U.S. media’s anti-Trump campaign, it has also been the “leftard” ideologies that have dominated academia and the press. How does one define “leftard”? Something that So Keng-chit said a few days ago was very appropriate, "the definition of “leftard” is that they replace strong and weak with “wrong and “right”; strong must be “wrong”, and weak must be “right”. Leftards uplift the weak by putting down the bullies to attain moral high grounds. The leftards must oppose the United States, for the see the United States as strong. The leftards sympathize with Saddam Hussein, because compared with the United States, Saddam Hussein is weak. They cannot see that Saddam Hussein is strong compared with the Iraqis. Hence the ‘tard’ in leftard.”
It is not that they cannot see, they are just intentionally not seeing. The mainstream media reports about Iraq after Saddam Hussein had fallen were that there was no longer a stronghold of a government, which led to the loss of societal management. Bombs were exploding daily, and blood flooded the land of the country. People lost homes and livelihoods. However, data showed that in the later phase of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Iraq’s population was 26 million, and the per capita GDP was only US$625, not to mention that the inflation rate was high in the three digits. After the United States attacked Iraq and introduced the democratic system, the Iraqi population has risen to 35 million, the per capita GDP has increased to US$4,600, and the inflation rate has dropped to 6%. Despite the global economic slowdown, the Iraqi economy has grown by an average of 9.9% per year for more than a decade.
In addition, the mainstream media rarely reported the substantial progress in Afghanistan’s economy and people’s livelihood after the United States eradicated the Taliban regime before establishing a democratic system in Afghanistan. It is rarely reported that after South Africa got rid of the white regime, social security was horrifying. It is because such truthful reporting is not politically correct.
Shouldn’t the motto of news publishing be “all news worth reporting”? When political correctness overrides this creed, there is no longer press freedom.
The so-called political correctness stems from anti-discrimination. Anti-discrimination means upholding the concept that “all men are born equal”, and to protect vulnerable groups. Anti-discrimination used to be a kind of progress, since the starting point is not the interests of the majority of society, but the moral and spiritual demands. But when this kind of protection gradually develops into a disregard towards differences and the diversity of human life, it becomes leftards who wave around the banner of political correctness. If the welfare of new immigrants is treated the same as that of local residents, how is that different from obliterating the long-term tax payment of local residents? Using Black Lives Matter to rationalize violence and chaos, you get Black Lives Better, and ignore the fundamental problems of the root causes of issues such as the Black community’s slighting of education; with the police worrying that law enforcement will cause them trouble, the crime in the Black areas will increase. Anti-discrimination has developed into a state where even praising women for being beautiful is discrimination. Obama once praised the Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris as the most beautiful State Attorney General in the United States, and was then accused of discrimination by feminists. He was forced to apologize. To protect LGBT, many American college toilets no longer distinguish between men and women, making women fearful.
“All men are born equal” is a false proposition. Some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouths, and others are born in the slums of Africa. How are they born equal? American conservative Russel Kirk said that we must pay attention to diversity and differences. Only before God and a fair court can there be true quality; all other attempts to achieve equality will inevitably lead to societal stagnation. If the balance of natural differences and conventions is tipped in order to pursue equality for all, then it will not be long before tyrants or despicable oligarchs start to create new inequalities.
Socialism waves around the banner of equality, and has been breeding tyranny for a whole century. Modern leftards is another form of pursuit of equality, one that is destroying the freedom of human society. Freedom is more important than equality. If there is no freedom, there will be no equality among people who are not free.
This U.S. general election may as well be regarded as a battle between freedom and equality.
welfare loss 在 7.8 Import Tariffs: Small Country Welfare Effects 的推薦與評價
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