Director General Louis M. Huang of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles, Vice Provost Cindy Fan of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Director Min Zhou of the UCLA Asia Pacific Center co-launched the UCLA “Taiwan in the World” lecture series and its inaugural forum on Thursday, May 20, 2021.
The topic of the inaugural forum, “Lessons learned from the Pandemic: Taiwan’s response to COVID-19 and the future of global health policy and research,” featured a dialogue between Dr. Jason Wang, Associate Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at Stanford University, and Dr. Frank Chang, the Wintek Chair in Electrical Engineering at UCLA.
Director General Huang remarked on UCLA’s worldwide reputation and its over-the-years cultivation of numerous talents for Taiwan, the United States, and the rest of the world. He also mentioned the donation by the Foreign Ministry of the Republic of China (Taiwan) to UCLA in November 2020, as it was intended to establish the “Taiwan in the World” program at its Asia Pacific Center as a benchmark for Taiwan-U.S. cooperation in higher education and to foster professional talents with global visions for Taiwan and the United States.
“Taiwan is a global leader in containing COVID-19, thanks to its proactive government and the public’s cooperation with the government’s advisory measures,” said Director General Huang. “ Recently, Asian governments with stringent COVID-19 measures ranging from Singapore to Vietnam to Japan to Taiwan are battling upticks in cases of the new COVID-19 variants. The importance and urgency of the global health and epidemic alert system, as well as international cooperation, stand out in the crisis.”
Director General Huang urged the WHO and related parties to recognize Taiwan’s longstanding contributions to public health, disease prevention, and the human right to health in the international community, and to include Taiwan in the WHO. “Taiwan will continue to work with the rest of the world to ensure that all enjoy the fundamental human right to health, as stipulated in the WHO Constitution.”