A public health emergency response system has begun to take shape in China and will be further fortified, said Vice Minister of Health Gao Qiang recently in Beijing.
In line with guidance from the central authorities, Gao said, the nation has made remarkable progress during the past year in building a comprehensive rapid response system for public health emergencies that includes disease control, surveillance and data collection, emergency medical aid and service supervision subsystems.
Rapid Response Command Center. The Ministry of Health has established an office that will open a rapid response command center during public health emergencies. Local health departments have generally developed similar mechanisms for severe epidemic outbreaks to coordinate resources for research, emergency aid and provision of response suggestions to local Party organs and governments.
Emergency Plan. In accordance with the Law on Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases and the Regulation on Public Health Emergencies, the Ministry of Health and local governments have developed emergency plans for public health crises. The State Council is evaluating and improving these plans to cope with various kinds of public health crises.
Surveillance and Data Collection Network. The Ministry of Health has established a unified national public health information platform and a disease information system that incorporates severe epidemic monitoring and reporting, food-related health incident reporting, severe environmental pollution reporting and radioactive health incident reporting. The epidemic reporting subsystem connects the national, provincial, municipal and county-level disease prevention and control organizations as well as other health institutions at various levels.
Disease Prevention and Control. The Ministry of Health and the State Development and Reform Commission (SDRC) have worked out a plan to reinforce the national disease prevention and control network. The central government and local governments will jointly contribute 6.8 billion yuan (US$821.56 million) to establish local disease prevention and control institutions, which are to be completed by the end of 2004. The SDRC has allocated 63.4 million yuan (US$7.66 million) for the first phase of the 760,000-square-meter National Disease Prevention and Control Center, construction of which will begin this year.
Emergency Medical Aid. The central and local governments have jointly contributed 11.4 billion yuan (US$1.38 billion) to establish an emergency medical aid network. The central government provided half of the funds, which is to be used in China’s underdeveloped central and western regions. Construction of municipal-level epidemic hospitals or wards and some emergency aid centers has already begun, with the entire subsystem scheduled to be in place nationwide within three years.
Medical Service Supervision. The Ministry of Health worked with various other departments to develop the Regulations on Building the Medical Service Supervision and Enforcement Mechanism. It is designed to eliminate such problems as overlapping jurisdiction between enforcement authorities, misuse of authority and weak supervision.
Interdepartmental Coordination. The State Development and Reform Commission has established an emergency materials production and reserve system, and the Ministry of Finance has set up an emergency fund. An epidemic monitoring and reporting system has been deployed throughout the civil aviation, railway, transportation and agriculture departments. Other departments and local governments have established accountability systems for emergency prevention and control as appropriate for their situations.
(China.org.cn by Alex Xu, April 12, 2004)
