will have to produce a clean bill of health from Sept. 1, a National Immigration Agency (NIA) official said yesterday. According to the official, the Department of Health (DOH) has decided to impose the new requirement after a Chinese spouse who had come to Taiwan for a “reunion visit” was diagnosed as having tuberculosis (TB). At present, Chinese spouses applying to make short-term “reunion visits” need not present a clean bill of health. The TB-infected Chinese spouse living in eastern Taiwan didn’t develop symptoms until some time after her arrival in Taiwan, the official said.
Under current regulations, only Chinese citizens who apply to stay in Taiwan as a dependent of their local spouses are required to present a clean bill of health. Presently, Chinese spouses have to wait for two years to qualify for applying to stay in Taiwan as a dependent.
As Chinese spouses make an average of more than 13,000 “reunion visits” to Taiwan annually, the NIA official said, the government needs to formulate a new “health threshold” to plug any possible holes in the country’s epidemic prevention network.
Starting Sept. 1, Chinese spouses intending to make their first “reunion visit” to Taiwan have to produce a clean bill of health issued by a state-run hospital, legally licensed private hospital or university affiliated hospital and certified by an officially designated Chinese notary agency.
The clean bill of health must also be certified by Taiwan’s quasi-official Straits Exchange Foundation to prove the document’s validity, the NIA official said, adding that the NIA will not begin to process Chinese spouses’ entry applications until after all those health-related documents are available.
The health checkups must include screening for AIDS, rubella, TB, prevalent intestinal parasites and leprosy, the official added.
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