Public Health and Medicine Project List

Public health has always been a key field for development in international assistance. Among the SDGs put forward by the UN in 2015, public health goals included ending hunger, promoting health and well-being for all, and ensuring access to water and sanitation for all, all while revitalizing the global partnership for sustainable development. 

In recent years, the World Health Assembly (WHA) at the World Health Organization (WHO) has repeatedly emphasized the importance of universal health coverage, hoping that all countries can provide more comprehensive health services through close public-private cooperation, increased awareness of personal health management, and top-down integration of community resources.

As a member of the international aid and development community, the TaiwanICDF has been responding to international development trends for many years. The TaiwanICDF leverages Taiwan’s public health development experience and the resources of domestic medical institutions to help our partner countries develop better medical care environments and levels of health. The TaiwanICDF comprehensively promotes projects at the policy, health facility and community levels to assist partner countries in improving their capabilities in policy planning and strategy, healthcare personnel training, and community health education to jointly move toward the goal of universal health coverage. To give a few examples, the Capacity Building Project for the Prevention and Control of Chronic Renal Failure (Belize) produced Belize's first kidney disease risk factor epidemiological report, and, based on this report, an academic paper “Prevalence and Risk Factors for Chronic Kidney Disease in Belize” was published in Lancet Regional Health — Americas. This paper served as a reference for the country’s government policies and attracted international institutions’ attention to the prevalence of the chronic kidney disease. In a second case, the Health Information Management Efficiency Enhancement Project in Paraguay (Phase I&II) doubled the average number of patient services in 190 medical institutions (as of March 2023) from the 17 regions nationwide and shortened the average waiting time for patients from 2.5-3 hours to 30 minutes. The cumulative number of patients receiving consultation services through HIS has reached 2,583,000 and continues to increase steadily. An oral presentation discussing these achievements was given at the 2021 44th World Hospital Congress, and the project also received a gold medal at the 2022 Taiwan Sustainability Action Awards. In Africa, the Maternal and Infant Health Care Improvement Project in the Kingdom of Eswatini (Phase I&II) successfully increased the rate of Eswatini women’s prenatal visits from 23.8% in 2018 to 35.8% in 2022, and it decreased the rate of infant mortality by 19%. Moreover, phase I project results were disseminated in a poster presentation at the 2021 Global Health & Innovation Conference, and phase II project progress was presented at the 2021 International Conference of Public Health and at the 15th Biennial East, Central and Southern Africa College of Nursing (ECSACON) Scientific Conference. Taken together, these initiatives have benefited government officials, healthcare service providers, and the general public in our partner countries. Due to their excellent experiences in projects like these, partner country governments often speak in support of our government in international arenas and expand the scale and categories of their cooperation with the TaiwanICDF.

Since its inception in 2005, the Healthcare Personnel Training Program has held that friendly and allied countries put forward their own training requirements. This policy adheres to our goal of building the capacity of healthcare personnel in our partner countries. On-the-job training is provided for healthcare personnel in Taiwan in cooperation with suitable professional health facilities selected by the TaiwanICDF. In addition, to achieve synergy between projects, this program is paired with training programs under the TaiwanICDF’s public health projects to allow trainees to serve as contact windows for future cooperation with Taiwan or seed trainers. This speeds up communication in the project preparation phase and contributes to capacity building of related healthcare personnel in the future. The TaiwanICDF will continue to make every effort to assist foreign healthcare personnel in increasing their professional knowledge, expanding their skills and participating in exchanges, all to improve the quality of medical care in Taiwan’s diplomatic allies and friendly countries. Furthermore, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the TaiwanICDF has been cooperating with the Taiwan Society of Nephrology and the Taiwanese Association of Diabetes Educators since 2021 to launch the Kidney Disease Basic Training Course and the Diabetes Mellitus Basic Training Course respectively. We are also developing the Hypertension Basic Training Course with the Taiwan Society of Cardiology to support our allied and friendly countries in improving the capacity of their healthcare personnel.

For humanitarian assistance, the TaiwanICDF focuses on post-disaster recovery and reconstruction. For example, in response to Haiti’s big earthquake in August 2021, the TaiwanICDF had implemented the Improving Nutritional Status of Households Affected by the Earthquake in South Department, Haiti Project in cooperation with Action Against Hunger in South Department. The aim was to improve the nutritional conditions of women and children under five years old impacted by the earthquake in the communes of Camp Perrin and Maniche. The project identified acutely malnourished children and referred them to appropriate treatment services, supplemented the nutritional intake of women and children, and conducted awareness sessions relevant to health and hygiene. In addition, another focus of the TaiwanICDF’s humanitarian assistance is the issue of international refugees. The TaiwanICDF has worked in cooperation with Good Neighbors Taiwan to implement a project entitled the PSS service enhancement project for Ukrainian refugee children in Suceava, Galați and Constanța in Romania. This project  trains refugee aid providers and Ukrainian refugee women to enhance their PSS capacity so that they can better assist Ukrainian refugee children. Additionally, the program selects 24 Ukrainian refugee women to become PSS workers for GN Romania to support their livelihoods and improve their living conditions in that country. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the largest global lockdown in contemporary times. It not only fundamentally changed the trajectory of globalization but also forced industries to adapt and countries to prioritize their public health and medical systems. In the post-pandemic era, the TaiwanICDF will continue to expand the scope of its cooperation with partner countries in the fields of public health and medicine. We will assist in their cultivation of elite talent and proactively introduce technology and equipment to improve the operation and management of their medical facilities. In addition, we will work together to improve their capabilities in advanced digital and intelligent medicine.

• Update:2023-04-07
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