Beijing's health authorities are requiring districts and counties to set up more outpatient clinics to provide rabies vaccinations, and to raise public awareness of rabies prevention.

 

The municipal health bureau also urged medical institutes to transfer suspected rabies cases to You'an Hospital or Ditan Hospital for diagnosis, treatment and quarantine.

 

The Chinese capital also wants districts and counties to track animals that bite people and ensure the creatures are properly disposed of.

 

Beijing currently has 45 outpatient clinics providing inoculations against rabies. They are required to be open 24 hours a day and make regular reports to local disease control and prevention centres.

 

Although no permanent residents of Beijing have contracted rabies, nine people who contracted rabies in other parts of the country were brought to the city for treatment in local hospitals before they died.

 

The disease has killed more than 2,000 people in other parts of the country this year.

 

(China Daily October 28, 2006)