Speaker meeting via Zoom

TuesdayGram Zoom Monday 14th Sept 2020 

20 members and Dr Chunhuei Chi were on-line for last nights Zoom meeting.

Chunhuei Chi is a professor of the Global Health Program, Health Management and Policy Program, and the Director of Center for Global Health at College of Public Health and Human Sciences, Oregon State University. 

His expertise and research includes health systems finance, critical evaluation of International Health (IH) programs, equity in health development, and equity in health and financial burden of healthcare, governance and priority setting in health programs and system, and community ownership approach to health systems strengthening. 

He has been teaching at National Yang-Ming University in Taiwan for intensive courses since 2010, and global health workshop at Taipei Medical University since 2015. 

Dr. Chi can a detailed account of Covid-19. The first recorded case was in Wohan in November 2019, by December the infection reached Taiwan where the Medical Officer reported that Human to Human transmission was occurring. This was disputed by the Chinese authorities and WHO, and it was some weeks before this was accepted as the means of transmission of the virus. WHO declared Covid-19 a Pandemic in March 2020

Dr, Chi spoke about the Global response to the virus, Sweden tried to get “Herd immunity” with limited success.. Britain initially followed this path but in line with most of Europe was slow in responding which resulted in lockdown and now containment. In the USA there was significant denial of the problem with a slow response leading to an impasse, even now a proportion of Americans believe Covid to be a hoax. In South Korean mass testing was introduced very early in the epidemic which reduced the number of cases. In Taiwan the response was even more organized. Taiwan suffered very badly in the SARS epidemic in 2003, as a consequence a high level of advanced planning for an epidemic was in place. There was effective leadership, a strong medical infrastructure, good advanced planning and a system of care for those required to isolate .This included testing, tracing contacts, supply of masks and PPE all of which resulted in containing the virus with only 499 cases of which 406 were people returning to Taiwan. There was no lockdown as the requirements for “normal” life to continue existed, ie. Low daily cases, surplus hospital capacity, an efficient test and trace system and most importantly public support for the measures introduced,

For the future Dr. Chi talked about the need to balance “Herd behavior” and “Herd immunity” and the need to think in terms of “Global Village” and “Global community”.

Richard Dyke gave the vote of thanks.

Moonraker – due to the new Covid regulations, although the event would probably be exempted, it has been postponed to Spring 2021

Ball Draw Jas Shorney, no Joker, wine only, next time £100

Next Meetings: = Sept 19th District Forum Zoom meeting 10.00am

Sept 28th possibly face to face, venue tba, or Zoom meeting

Oct 12th possibly face to face at Oake or Zoom meeting

Oct 5th Council meeting

Final Toast - “Rotary Around The World”