The Standing Committee of the 10th National People's Congress (NPC) is in a second round of deliberation over the revised draft amendment to the 1989 Law on the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases.  

The revised version of the draft requires the prevention and control of infectious diseases to be written into the country's economic and social development plan, a first for the nation.

The newly added clause is intended to ensure adequate financial support to combat epidemics. This is key to oiling the wheels of disease prevention and control, said Hu Guangbao in a report submitted to the legislature on Monday.

Hu, vice director of the NPC's Law Committee, said the second version of the draft pools the opinions of lawmakers, experts and officials and contains several major improvements over the preliminary version reviewed by the legislature in early April.

Hu said the revised version also places a new obligation on the central government: providing medical aid to low-income groups and reducing or abolishing their treatment charges.

The draft also sets new tasks for local governments above the county level. These include ensuring special funds for contagious disease prevention in townships, villages and urban communities.

The amendment reinforces the establishment of contagious disease prevention systems at the grass-roots level, especially in rural areas, traditional weak points in China's epidemic prevention system.

Township governments are expected to assume more responsibility by organizing local efforts in disease control and prevention, and residents' and villagers' committees--the foundation of the government structure--will be required to mobilize people to participate in the fight against epidemics.

By clarifying the duties of governments at various levels in contagious disease prevention and control, the draft is expected to improve coordination between the central and local authorities in such areas as epidemic reporting.

The new draft deletes an existing clause that gives the State Council the right to designate Class One infectious diseases, the highest rank of communicable disease.

Other revisions include prohibiting discrimination against patients suffering infectious diseases, protecting individuals' privacy and strengthening virus controls in laboratories.

The country's lawmakers yesterday also deliberated on a revised draft law on electronic signatures that gives online signatures the same legal status as those penned on paper.

An online signature is an electronic signature that can be used to authenticate the identity of the sender of a message or the signer of a document.

As Internet trade requires a reliable third party to identify the signers, the credibility of online certifying organizations is significant for transaction security. The draft law requires that institutions seeking to provide identification services for online signers receive approval from designated government organizations.

The revised draft also extends the retention period for electronic signatures to five years from the previous two.

(China Daily June 23, 2004)