In the above video from RTHK, a senior advisor from the World Health Organization hangs up on a journalist after refusing to acknowledge Taiwan’s successful efforts in battling the new coronavirus epidemic.
With the number of new coronavirus cases exceeding 723,000 globally, Taiwan has been an outlier in preventing a serious outbreak from occurring within its borders despite its proximity to China.
But while a global health body might be expected to view Taiwan as a model for other nations to follow in battling the ongoing pandemic, Bruce Aylward, the senior advisor to the WHO’s assistant director-general, hung up on a Hong Kong-based journalist who insisted on talking about Taipei’s success story.
The incident has rekindled accusations that the WHO, which has sidelined Taiwan from its emergency meetings on the new coronavirus, is kowtowing to Beijing, thus putting politics above lives.
