Taiwan's vax injury compensation program

excerpts from my upcoming book, Global Vaccine Injury Compensation Schemes.

While the United States federal government sits on its own rear end processing serious COVID vaccine injury claims, many countries around the world are actually processing claims and paying compensation.

In my upcoming book, Global Vaccine Injury Compensation Schemes, I will highlight several nations and the system for compensating their citizens.

The nation of Taiwan, a close ally to the United States, established The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) in 1988 after an outbreak of polio in the Taoyuan area (25 miles southwest of Taipei) from the oral polio vaccine during 1986.

If the name of the program sounds familiar, the US’s own NVICP was used as a template with just a few similarities. It is an administrative process, not a legal processed based in the courts.

And the VICP was amended to handle COVID vaccine injuries in 2021.

Taiwan’s VICP process is administrative, it does appear to be more transparent than the US’s CounterMeasures Injury Compensation System that was developed in 2010. Even Taiwan has its own CDC and FDA.

The legal framework for the VICP is “The Disease Control Act (Article 30)” as well as well as the subsequent funding mechanism “Regulations Governing Collection and Review of Relief Fund for Victims of Immunization”.

Taiwan has pushed forward several compensation cases from the COVID vaccine unlike the US.

December 2022. Taiwan national news reports state the Minister of Health and Welfare has agreed to pay NT$2 million (US $65,500) to an elderly male who suffered a stroke from the Astra Zeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

The review panel could not establish a correlation between the injury and the vaccine, however, decided to award compensation

In addition, 6 other claims alleging non-disclosed injuries from the Astra Zeneca COVID-19 vaccine were awarded compensation ranging from NT$20,000 to NT$2 million (US $655.00 to $65,500.00)

July 2022. The VICP awarded NT$3.5 million (US $117,000) to a family of person that died of an Intracerebral Hemorrhage after a dose of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. Also compensation was awarded to an additional 10 persons. Damage amounts were not made available to the press at that time.

March 2022. The VICP awarded NT$6 million (US $210,000) to the family of a woman in her 50’s who died of thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome. This award marked the first time that the panel of experts in the VICP working group concluded that someone died as the result of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in Taiwan. There were many who died as a result of the vaccine, but this case marks the first compensated award for death.

Also announced, seven cases of approved “vaccine injury relief payments” including two cases involving the Moderna vaccine with payments ranging from NT$25,000 to NT$300,000; four cases involving the AstraZeneca with payments ranging from NT$6,000 to NT$6 million; and one case involving Pfizer with a damage award of NT$25,000. The last case involved a teenager who developed myocarditis.

Why did I include this detail in the article.

Simple. One, other countries are awarding compensation. It is crucial to understand the damage these vaccines are causing around the world. We need to document when other countries recognize the injuries and award compensation.

Two, our own government using HRSA as the front man, refuse to provide any transparency regarding damage awards in the CounterMeasures Injury Compensation Program. Just look at the 30 cases of awarded in 2010 from the H1N1 vaccine causing GBS and other injuries. It took them nearly 11 years before making some of the data public.

Overall, Taiwan has awarded over 30 cases and will continue to compensate. The agency meets every 2 months to review claims that have been filed.

HRSA is still working on its first compensated case, declared back in Sept 2021, nearly 15 months ago.

Keep learning, keep challenging yourself and always, always question authority.