Message From the Commissioner

Health is the basic right of every citizen; it is also an important indicator of the quality of medical care services provided to the citizens by the Health Department. In the last one and more years since I took the office, I have this in my mind: I hope to, through the promotion of health policies, develop plans that are advantageous to the quality of life of the people to provide the citizens with health care services of the highest quality.
The World Health Organization has been advocating the concept of “Health for All”. This is our goal in building Taipei City a healthy city. In the last year, we have actively promoted public health policies using the following three principles as the main axes:
1. Stressing the pragmatism of policies
The adequacy and pragmatism of a health policy is the utmost important consideration on the substantial benefit of the citizens. How to effectively allocate and operate the manpower and supplies needed in program operation is a direction that an administrator should think about and strive for. For instance, the plan of the Department to allocate communicable disease control workers in communities is an example in point. The centralized allocation of disease control workers at the time of SARS outbreak is an active operational mode; at ordinary time, disease control workers should go deep into the community to face the needs of the community in disease control. One should not, therefore, adhere rigidly to the operational modes of the past, and should act pragmatically and with innovation to bring the best welfare to the people.