Over the past year, our Mobile Medical Missions
service was converted into a Medical Project in Pacific
Island Countries to keep pace with international trends and
provide more project-oriented forms of assistance. This
program allows us to better focus on meeting individual
countries’ specific medical needs. The Taiwanese hospitals
cooperating on the project appraised its feasibility and
dispatched eight teams to eight Pacific island countries to
provide clinical and technological exchange and treatment
in specialty fields such as ophthalmology, orthopedics,
gynecology and surgery. Such operations have raised the
visibility of Taiwanese medical services, garnering positive
feedback and recognition at home and abroad.
Furthermore, with Taiwan’s medical and health care
standards being constantly improved and the majority of
medical institutions, medical equipment manufacturers
and academic units striving to provide better medical
diagnostic services, medical equipment in Taiwan is
always being replaced and upgraded. Much of the used
equipment remains in excellent condition. Since 2010,
we have been involved in a number of cases involving the
donation of used equipment to partner countries, working
in cooperation with the Global Medical Instruments
Support and Service (GMISS) program operated by the
Department of Health and National Taiwan University
Hospital. On receiving a list of partner countries’
requirements, we work with GMISS personnel to seek out
the right equipment in Taiwan and then make a donation.
We assist partner countries’ recipient units with associated
servicing and maintenance and provide comprehensive
training courses on the use of such equipment to foster
their pool of human resources.
In the past year, with the assistance of GMISS and
the IHCSA, we worked with the Taiwanese embassy in
Burkina Faso to donate one digital mammography unit
and two used CT scanners to local hospitals. At the
same time, we also provided training on the proper use
and maintenance of the equipment, hoping to enhance
standards associated with medical equipment at partner
medical institutions. By providing education and training in
maintenance, operation and interpretation during donation
projects such as these, we are building capacity among
medical personnel in recipient units and building local
human resources. In this way, we actively assist medical
professionals in our partner countries to enrich their
know-how, technical skills and experience and help them
realize the development objective of providing higher
quality medical care.
Emergency Aid
One of the primary functions of the TaiwanICDF is to
provide emergency aid to nations and peoples affected
by natural disaster or conflict, and to assist survivors in
dealing with the impact of these events and restoring their
original standard of living.
Due to the impact of climate change, we have seen
annual increases in the number of humanitarian crises
involving disease and epidemics in recent years. To
speed up our responses to these and other crises and
to implement project-oriented programs that respect the
spirit of ownership, we have designed a set of application
forms for projects involving emergency aid. Whenever a
disaster occurs, Taiwanese embassies or similar units
operating overseas can supply these forms to the relevant
authorities in partner countries and assist them in applying
for humanitarian assistance. In 2012, we used this means
of cooperation between Taiwanese embassies and partner
countries to respond to two crises:
Assistance to Rural Populations Affected by the
Food Emergency Due to the Effects of the Drought
in Paraguay:
Working in cooperation with the National
Emergency Secretariat, we provided emergency food
rations and mobile water storage tanks in order to relieve
the local effects of a severe drought.
Honduras Home Garden Project—Emergency Relief
for Victims in the South:
Implemented in cooperation
with the Honduran Agricultural Science and Technology
Agency (DICTA), this project was designed to support
the production of staple crops in southern Honduras,
establishing home vegetable gardens and irrigation
systems to achieve self-sufficiency in food production
in the aftermath of a drought that had severely affected
disadvantaged farmers.
By lending a helping hand to partners affected by
climate events, these two projects demonstrate our
commitment to providing timely assistance in the spirit of
humanitarian concern.
Post-disaster Reconstruction
The principal objective behind post-disaster
reconstruction is to restore beneficiaries’ original standard
of living.
In Tuvalu, the effects of climate change are resulting
in highly unstable, below-average patterns of rainfall,
which have continued to affect the water sources that
local people rely on in their daily lives. The lack of rain
has also had a huge impact on the growth of local crops,
29
