According to Taiwanese media reports, Kuomintang spokesperson Jiang Yizhen said today that the Taiwan Epidemic Command Center yesterday announced a multi-telemedicine plan for home care, requiring grassroots pharmacists to shoulder the responsibility of delivering medicines to the government. This is a standard practice of speaking first and communicating later. Compared with the New Taipei City Government and the New Taipei City Pharmacists Association's joint efforts to formulate complete SOPs and related guidelines, the command center is obviously out of touch with the profession and has caused backlash among pharmacists at the grassroots level.
Jiang Yizhen said that while the New Taipei City Government fully respects and communicates with the Pharmacists Association and proposes a complete home care plan based on smart medical care, the DPP authorities have introduced unclear guidelines without taking into account the manpower and capacity of community pharmacies in various places. This perfectly exposes the serious shortcomings of the DPP authorities that have always been slow to respond since the outbreak of the Omicron epidemic and have dragged down the grassroots.
Jiang Yizhen believes that the epidemic command center issued unclear guidelines without sufficient investigation and coordination and communication. It also ignores the work rights and health rights of grassroots pharmacists and completely exposes pharmacists who work hardest during the epidemic to unknown health risks.
She called on the command center to publish relevant guidelines and policies in the future, and to fully communicate with frontline medical and pharmacist personnel who have worked hardest and sacrificed the most in epidemic prevention. Taiwan's epidemic prevention achievements must not be based on exploiting and squeezing grassroots medical care. She hopes that the Tsai administration will think twice.
