A state program to reduce congenital diseases among newborns will be launched this year, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday.

The program will follow guidelines set by the United Nations and the World Health Organization (WHO) in preventing deficiency among newborns, said Ma Xu, deputy director of the Science and Technology Institute affiliated with the State Family Planning Commission.

Ma, one of the drafters of the state program, said it will be the largest such project in the world.

Studies show that 4 to 6 percent of around 20 million babies born each year in China suffer from at least one of more than 100 kinds of congenital deficiency, including bifid spine and intellectual abnormalities.

The WHO stresses that prevention of congenital anomalies is an important part of the efforts to guarantee the basic health right of human beings. It calls for all nations to center their mother and baby health plans on this issue.

Ma said that the new plan is expected to help reduce the incidence of congenital diseases among the country's newborns by 20 to 30 percent within five years.

He noted that China will take three steps to implement the program: Measures such as vaccinations and taking nutrients will be encouraged before pregnancy; using gene chips and other advanced technologies to detect some major congenital diseases during pregnancy and taking effective cures to treat possible diseases; and remedial measures such as feeding the newborns with enzymes to prevent or ease possible congenital diseases.

The country will make good use of its family planning service network to carry out the new program, Ma said, adding that the country's more than 400,000 professional service staff involved in family planning and medical workers will participate in the project.

Xinhua said that year-long pilot experiments of the program have produced encouraging results in Guizhou Province and the Special Economic Zone in Shenzhen, of southern Guangdong Province.

The family planning policy, adopted three decades ago, is shifting its focus from controlling the size of the population to improving the quality of the population.

They said the country's successful experience in realizing the "low birth rate, low mortality and low growth rate" of its population will lay a good foundation for the country to carry out its enormous eugenic program. In addition, they noted, China can learn a lot from international practices in this respect.

(Eastday.com.cn 03/29/2001)