(Image source from: nbcnews.com)
While the world has been fighting a deadly pandemic, Taiwan allegedly warned WHO about the possible outbreak only to be ignored by them.
Taiwan has been praised across the world for their containment methods of the novel coronavirus but the country revealed things that left people questioning the integrity and seriousness of WHO during this time of the hour.
Tailwan allegedly wrote to WHO on December 31, 2019 raising further questions surrounding the human to human contact spread of a disease in Wuhan but WHO ignored their emails. As per the reports from the MOHW of Taiwan, the organisation also refrained from giving guidelines on how to combat this deadly pathogen.
MOHW issued a tweet surrounding the same as mentioned below.
The facts regarding Taiwan’s email to alert WHO to possible danger of #COVID19#email內容 #TaiwanCanHelp #TaiwanIsHelping @WHO
— MOHW of Taiwan (@MOHW_Taiwan) April 11, 2020
英文新聞稿：https://t.co/AvyHulhrlU pic.twitter.com/nYvmY4R2ao
Addressing the severity of the situation, Taiwan finally released the email that they had sent to WHO concerned about the outbreak that was happening in Wuhan, China. They informed WHO reporting that China has reported cases not that of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and that the samples for the same are under investigation.
“However because at the time there were as yet no cases of the disease in Taiwan, we could not state directly and conclusively that there had been human-to-human transmission,” Taiwan’s CDC reported.
Since Taiwan has been living under the shadows of China, it was excluded from the World Health Organisation. It is extremely important to note that WHO initially denied the possible existence of any kind of studies that showcase the human to human transmission of the pathogen.
WHO also failed to get the samples of the live strain of the virus from China that could have been used for the diagnostic tests to further prevent the pandemic from getting worse. They also denied about the fact that Taiwan had cautioned them surrounding the outbreak of the disease in China.
Some of the prior erroneous reports from WHO has also been a little misleading when they concluded the cluster spread of the virus in India as community transmission. WHO has later confirmed that this confusion has been corrected already.
India is believed to be in stage in which is the local transmission of the disease.
With these consistent slip ups and the lack of potential by the global health organisation, even US plans on conducting an enquiry on the organisation and stop the funding in the meantime.
For further information, you can read the issued statements by Taiwan’s CDC here
By Somapika Dutta
