Ma must not risk Taiwan blood for PRC deals
Taiwan News Page 6 /2010-09-23 12:00 AM
The safety of Taiwan's blood supply is being risked by the failure of President Ma Ying-jeou's rightist Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) government to safeguard human rights in pacts with the authoritarian People's Republic of China.
Taiwan's citizenry were warned of this impending threat by the Taiwan Association for Human Rights and a coalition formed of civic groups to monitor cross-strait pacts between the KMT administration and the Chinese Communist Party-ruled PRC, such as the controversial "Cross-Strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement" (ECFA).
Last month, the Cross-Strait Agreement Monitoring Alliance called on the Ma government to press for the insertion of clauses into the ECFA and future accords with the authoritarian PRC that would uphold environmental, labor rights and human rights standards, which Beijing has already accepted in free trade agreements with countries such as Chile and New Zealand.
The necessity for this demand was underlined in the starkest terms when the TAHR and the CSAMA revealed that the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Department of Health had agreed to permit expand imports of blood serum and blood plasma from the PRC earlier this month without advance Legislative approval.
The question of the potential danger of blood serum and plasma imported from the PRC had already been raised in March when the MOEA and DOH announced liberalization of imports of blood serum and plasma from the PRC, but was met with plap assurances from the DOH that blood serum and plasma imported from China would only be allowed to be used for in-vitro diagnostic tests for HIV/AIDS and hepatitis and would be banned from use in blood transfusions or for human use.
Nevertheless, there is ample cause to be worried about the entry of Chinese blood serum and plasma into Taiwan's medical system since China is a high-risk area for HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, malaria and other diseases which can be and are transmitted through blood transfusions.
Indeed, 35,000 of the estimated 85,000 Chinese with AIDS were infected through commercial blood donation and transfusion, according to the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS.
Given the PRC's notoriously poor human rights record, there are grave doubts over whether PRC medical institutions enforce rigorous and comprehensive regulations to ensure that blood products are obtained through voluntary donations and not obtained commercially or through coercion (such as from prisons), much less ensure the safety of such products.
Nevertheless, the MOEA announced September 14 that it would further liberalize imports of "standardized sera" and antigens and antibodies of diseases in vitro diagnostic devises from China.
There are numerous legal, health and ethical problems with the MOEA's announcement.
Blood rights
The TAHR expressed concern that the MOEA and DOH could be using a loophole to avoid the requirement for Legislative approval to open a back door for Taiwan medical supply companies to boost imports of blood products from the PRC despite the health risks and the gross violations of human rights in China with regard to human experimentation and forced blood "donation" and commercial sale of blood serum and plasma with inadequate safety precautions.
Second, medical professionals are highly sceptical of the DOH's assurances that such blood products will be used only for external diagnostic or research purposes and warn that medical personnel who handle blood products from China will themselves be exposed to high risk.
In addition to direct health risks to Taiwan citizens if such blood products enters our medical and health systems, there is also the problem of where the blood serum and plasma comes from, especially if it originates in humans, since the PRC is notorious for its "blood economy" which includes the commercial buying and selling of blood and organs which are often obtained through coercion or other inhumane methods.
It is imperative that the MOEA and DOH report to the Legislature to respond to these concerns and ensure that a rigorous public health inspection and human rights standard certification system in accordance with international standards with on-site inspections is in place before permitting importation of PRC human or animal blood serum and plasma or other products.
No less important is for the Ma government to take the protection of human rights, labor and environmental standards in both Taiwan and the PRC seriously and insist that further negotiations on cross-strait agreements take seriously the urgency of inserting appropriate human rights, environmental protection and labor rights standards and strictly enforce such standards in the implementation of such arrangements.
This issue is especially pressing since the next and sixth formal meeting between the leaders of Taipei's Strait Exchange Foundation and Beijing's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait in December is expected to sign cross-strait a medical and health cooperation agreement.
Any failure to inserting human rights clauses and strict import control and on-site inspection into safety and human rights into this pact will ensure that the blood and health of the Taiwan people will be sacrificed on the altar of KMT-CCP "reconciliation" and that the Taiwan government and our health and medical professions will become accomplices in the trampling of medical human rights in the PRC.
