The International Cooperation and Development Fund (TaiwanICDF) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) held their second webinar for the Management of COVID-19 Patients with Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) in the Pacific Islands. The webinar was officially launched on January 25, 2022 with a total of 87 participants from 6 countries.

Apart from the cooperation with the USAID for the second time, the TaiwanICDF was very pleased to jointly co-host this event with the Pacific Community (SPC) and the USAID Meeting Targets and Maintaining Epidemic Control (EpiC) Project. This technical webinar focused on sharing best practices to provide care for patients with NCDs. It also gave practical advice for engaging communities and establishing referrals in order bolder the work of health personnel who are caring for NCD patients with COVID-19 in Pacific Island Countries (PICs).

The webinar opened with remarks by TaiwanICDF Deputy Secretary General, Mr. Stephen J. H. Lee, and USAID Deputy Mission Director to the Pacific Islands and Mongolia, Mr. Sean Callahan, who both expressed their affirmation of the cooperation between the two organizations, and also hoped that the participants would gain a wealth of knowledge.

Deputy Secretary General Lee quoted a report of Lancet Regional Health (West Pacific) published on December 2021, saying that COVID-19 continues to devastate countries globally, and has severely impacted public health systems all over the world. The low COVID-19 case status among PICs could attribute to territorial specificities.
However, due to increasing socioeconomic pressure and stronger infectivity of Delta and Omicron variants, there is a growing trend of positive cases within PICs. Considering the high prevalence of NCDs in PICs and higher risk for NCD patients with COVID-19 to develop sever symptom, the demand for care of NCD patients with COVID-19 would increase inevitably.

In this webinar, Dr. Chun-Hsing Liao, Chief of Infectious Disease Section in Far-Eastern Memorial Hospital, shared the case management for patients with NCDs in Taiwan at the hospital level. Dr. Silina Motofaga, Clinical Services Advisor from SPC and Dr. Tuan Nguyen, Technical Specialist of Alive & Thrive Southeast Asia have shared NCDs and COVID-19 trends, common approaches to engage communities in caring for members with NCDs respectively.

In the field of public health and medicine, the TaiwanICDF has long served as a platform for international cooperation and actively cooperates with the public and private sectors on various topics, including maternal and infant health care, chronic disease prevention, health information and management system and public health emergency response. We will continue to use the professional resources from Taiwan’s medical and relevant professional institutions to plan and implement public health and medicine projects in our partner countries, thereby assisting them to strengthen their medical care and public health systems.

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• Update: 2022/03/02
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