Mr. Chairman, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is my honor to be here with you today at the 22nd CMAAO Congress & the 37th Council Meeting. On behalf of the Department of Health, I welcome you all, especially to the guests who have come a long way. I wish you a happy stay in Taiwan.

For forty some years, the Confederation of Medical Associations in Asia and Oceania has devoted itself to elevate the standards of medical education, medical care and medical ethics in the Asia-Pacific region. It has also encouraged the sharing of professional medical technologies through frequent international exchanges between non-governmental medical organizations. The Federation has also made efforts to see that the rights of physicians are properly protected, and that medicine as a profession earns its respect and commendation in society.

The 21st Century has brought about more reforming challenges to Taiwan in healthcare policies, national health insurance, medical care system, and the public attitudes toward health promotion. This is a time of rapid transformation; it is also a time of possibilities. The active promotion of healthcare services can alter the public's attitudes toward health maintenance, encourage their personal responsibility for their own health, refine the medical care-oriented practice of the healthcare systems and thus usher in a new era of healthcare.

Yet, the improvement of the medical care cannot be attained separately by individual countries. In this pluralistic era, reforms can only be brought about by consolidating all available community resources, minimizing their wastes, and utilizing international cooperations. Therefore, Taiwan must consolidate its resources. But how nations transcend their boundaries to collaborate with other nations is an issue that also needs to be addressed. This goal of international collaboration can be reached, I believe, with the joint efforts of the member associations of Confederation of Medical Associations in Asia and Oceania.

In the past decades, Taiwan had made remarkable achievements in medical care, in the national health insurance, in the control of communicable diseases, and in the improvement of the health of the population in general. Since 1997, the government of the Republic of China and the private sectors as well has sent delegations to Geneva to advocate Taiwan's quest of its membership in the World Health Organization. We believe that Taiwan with its population of 23 million should not be excluded from the global disease control system. For that exclusion, Taiwan had encountered difficulties in stamping the outbreak of enterovirus infection in 1998. No assistance had come from the WHO, because Taiwan was not a member. Another example of exclusion, Poliomyelitis had already been completely eradicated in Taiwan by 1984, but that's a fact that had been neither recognized nor certified by the WHO, again for Taiwan's not being a member. It was only when the WHO officially declared in 2000 that the Western Pacific Region was free of poliomyelitis that the polio-free status of Taiwan was acknowledged. We strongly believed that the membership of the WHO would enable Taiwan to learn from and contribute to the international healthcare community. We are ever ready to give, technically and financially, to the improvement of the well being of all. Simply put, Taiwan cares.

Ladies and gentlemen, you are the most distinguished experts in health and medical care. I am certain your collective efforts channeled through the Confederation of Medical Associations in Asia and Oceania can realize a brilliant future of a sound medical care environment in the Asia-Pacific region.

I thank you for your attention. I wish the Convention every success and good health to all of you.

Ming-Liang Lee