Is WHO Finally Warming to Taiwan?

As the COVID-19 pandemic raged worldwide, the World Health Organization (WHO) noticeably gave Taiwan the proverbial cold shoulder — despite the fact that it was the first nation anywhere to detect the virus in a laboratory in nearby Wuhan, China.

The discovery was made in December, 2019, and Taiwan was able to contain and defeat the pandemic in a matter of months.

The WHO's attitude toward Taiwan was seen in April, 2020, when Radio Television Hong Kong's (RTHK) prize-winning correspondent Yvonne Tong asked WHO Assistant Director-General Bruce Aylward whether Taiwan would be considered for membership in the United Nations-run health organization.

Aylward hung up on her — on live television.

But this may be changing and the WHO may be "warming up" to Taiwan.

"We do see change in [the past] three years," Dr. Yi-Chun Lo, deputy director-general of the Taiwan Center for Disease Control (CDC), told Newsmax on Wednesday, "The WHO allows a little more access for us to join their teleconferences [on international health issues]. So I'd say we have acquired more 'wiggle room' in the last three years."

Asked if WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was a close ally of China and thus an enemy of Taiwan, Lo replied: "That's too difficult for me to answer. He was not personally in the way of throwing Taiwan out of [the annual World Health Assembly] in Geneva [in March, 2023]. I have no special opinion of him. He's the public face of WHO. I don't want to say he's an enemy."

John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.