The World Health Organization (WHO) yesterday urged those responsible for organizing the 2008 Beijing Olympics to take action to meet the immense challenge of handling public health and emergency response issues during the Games. .

Henk Bekedam, China's WHO Representative said, "The influx of visitors in 2008 will bring enormous challenges to the surveillance and reporting mechanisms regarding infections and non-communicable diseases.

"To tackle any possible public health incidents a strong surveillance system must be in place as soon as possible, not only focusing on the three-week Olympic Games period but also the months before," he added. .

China had greatly enhanced its monitoring systems since the SARS outbreak which arrived in Beijing in 2003 and 2004 and the recent bird flu problem, he added.

But he warned that China must strengthen epidemic surveillance capacity from the bottom up. "By this I mean that people who first find infectious disease outbreaks should be able to report them in a timely fashion," he said on the sidelines of the Workshop on Public Health Safety and Emergency Response for the Beijing Olympic Games.

Wang Yu, director of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said, "We will do our best to monitor the symptoms of any infectious diseases, quickly issue warnings and take effective emergency response measures."

China has established the world's biggest reporting system for many infectious diseases, Wang said. He added that in the coming two years it would become an increasingly urgent task for China to set up a surveillance system and information-sharing network.

Beijing had already established a comprehensive prevention and control system, including surveillance and response, to contain any outbreaks of infectious diseases, said Liang Wannian, deputy director of the Beijing Health Bureau.

As well as infectious disease prevention China has also begun to work comprehensively in a range of other public health fields.

For example, the Olympic Organizing Committee have already selected farms to provide fresh food for those involved in the Games, said Dai Jianping, deputy director of Department of Medical and Health Services of the organizing committee.

On these farms tests and experiments are being done on livestock and vegetables to ensure athletes and visitors are offered the highest quality food available.

(China Daily May 18, 2006)