China's Minister of Health Chen Zhu said on Monday the
government will ensure public health safety during the Beijing Olympic Games by strengthening disease
monitoring, emergency response and medical treatment.
"The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games provides a great opportunity for
the country's public health development. Beijing will join hands
with co-host cities and its neighboring provinces to strengthen
disease-related information monitoring and make risk evaluations on
the possible public health accidents."
He said rehearsals would be held and exercises in public health
accidents would be improved. This was to prevent, reduce and
eliminate risks in the public health sphere during the August Games
to the maximum.
Liu Zejun, director of Beijing Municipal Disease Prevention and
Control Center, said special attention would be paid to the
following aspects when making public health risk evaluations:
epidemic disease spread, group incidence of a certain disease,
food-inflicted disease, vector organism and its control, hotel
disinfection, drinking water safety, environment safety and heat
stroke.
"Great efforts will be made in preventing rabies, bird flu, SARS
and group poisonings," Chen stressed.
Since the 2003 SARS outbreak, China has gradually improved its
national disease prevention and control system. From 2002 to now,
about 10.5 billion yuan (76.3 U.S. million dollars) had been spent
on infrastructure construction of disease prevention and control
centers nationwide.
(Xinhua News Agency January 7, 2008)