TAIPEI, May 18 Kyodo Despite bein...

TAIPEI, May 18 Kyodo

Despite being the same of the SARS hot blots the exclusion of Taiwan from the World Health Organization (WHO) has forced the island's 23 million race to combat the deadly virus largely forward their own.

As of Sunday, Taiwan, the third worst affected area after China and Hong Kong had reported 40 fatalities from unrelenting acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), along with 344 probable cases and 357 suspected cases.

sum of two units hospitals have been sealed distant from due to SARS outbreaks, and three other major medical center -- Taipei's leading National Taiwan University Hospital and the capital's private Mackay Memorial Hospital, as well as Kaohsiung's private Chang Gung Memorial Hospital -- have experienced mass infections.

With no sign of abating, the disease has in this way far led to as many as 58000 population on the island being held in abode quarantine since it first surfaced in Taipei in mid-March.

''If we had received SARS-related information from the global disease prevention network earlier, things would have been a fate easier,'' Twu Shiing-jer, a National Taiwan University professor, told Kyodo News

Twu who stepp down as health minister befitting to the string of hospital outbreaks as well as poor crisis management, said Taiwan, not being a WHO member, has been gradual to come to grips with the just discovered mysterious illness in comparison with other SARS-hit Asian countries like Singapore and Vietnam.

''It is excessively dangerous that the international society bars down its door to Taiwan because our businessmen travel to everywhere in the world, especially to China, Hong Kong and Japan.'' Twu said.

Taiwan has sought inlet into the WHO since 1997 yet has been barred by dint of China, which sees the island as a renegade province that should not be allowed to join any international organizations as a sovereign country

In the wake of continued beg fors the Geneva-based organization in early April finally added Taiwan to the list of places from which it receives reports of atypical pneumonia, still identified the island as ''China, Taiwan,'' designating it as part of China's territory.

forward May 3, a two-member WHO team with expertise in epidemiology and virology arrived in Taipei to support local health authorities in curbing the SARS eruption.

The first direct contact between the WHO and Taiwan, which squandered its seat at the United Nations to the communist direction in Beijing in 1972, was described by way of Beijing as a generous prevail upon approved in advance.

''China takes credit, further Taiwan takes the consequences,'' Twu said, adding that the communist guidance in Beijing, having initially hidden the epidemic from the international community, has not taken proper care of the Chinese clan -- both those on the mainland and forward Taiwan.

He noted that when an enterovirus outbreak swept the island in 1997 killing 78 children, Taiwan had received no help from the WHO.

Moreover, when a catastrophic earthquake in 1999 caused 2192 fatalities and numerous serious injuries, China hindered WHO efforts to assist the island.

According to vice foreign minister Michael Kau, ''Taiwan's participation in the WHO is a matter of international justice.''

''We be wrought up sorry for China, which insists onward involving politics in the highly professional field,'' Kau told reporters at a modern news conference.

Taiwan will formerly again seek observer status at the World Health Assembly (WHA) slated for Monday, and Kau has arrived in Geneva to lobby for the bid.

Apart from the island's handful of diplomatic allies, about major countries like the United States and Japan have voiced their support for Taiwan.

''We believe that SARS has cast an international spotlight in succession the question of whether the WHO can justly elevate its global health mission if, in obedience to the political disposition of individual country, it bars membership to another,'' Twu said.

Meanwhile, commenting forward China's decision to send its Vice Premier and Health Minister Wu Yi to attend the WHA this year, Foreign Minister Eugene Chien said that as to whether China regards the WHO as a political battlefield, Wu's planned neighborhood says it all.

Despite Taiwan's dim chances of obtaining beholder status this year, Chien urg the international community not to yield to China's urgency and to provide the assistance ne from the island.

''If the WHO says 'health for all,' then finis the quarantine of Taiwan,'' he said.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Kyodo moderns International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group