China urgently needs to upgrade its ability to combat natural
disasters and accidents and improve its mediocre emergency aid
mechanisms, experts said Monday.
"In most Chinese cities, a number of departments - fire
fighting, earthquake and meteorology - all have some responsibility
for emergency aid, but there is no effective coordination between
them," an expert pointed out at the annual conference of the China
Association for Science.
"The challenge represented by natural disasters is growing, so
China urgently needs to build an emergency aid team that can handle
emergencies more effectively in order to reduce casualties," said
Chen Fei, director of the fire fighting department under the
Shanghai city government.
Chen said the public has little knowledge of emergency aid and
should be taught first aid skills so that they can help out in a
disaster.
In the period 2002 to 2005, the Red Cross Society of China
(RCSC) trained a total of 9.605 million people in first aid, half
of whom worked in the sector of public security, construction,
mining, railway, health, civil aviation, tourism, power and
transportation.
The RCSC's aim for 2010 is to train up one person in first-aid
for every 15 to 300 residents of big cities and two to three people
in every Red Cross branch at township and community levels.
According to the RCSC, disasters in 2006 have so far killed
1,699 people in China and left another 415 missing.
A total of 300 million people have been affected by a dramatic
series of natural disasters this year, with losses totaling more
than 130 billion yuan (US$16.25 billion).
(Xinhua News Agency September 19, 2006)