Ministry lays out priorities in disease prevention
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China's Health Ministry announced Tuesday that hand-foot-mouth disease (HFMD), measles inoculation and mental health network construction were priorities to complete its annual disease prevention plan.
Ministry spokesman Deng Haihua said at a press conference hosted in Beijing that the ministry would closely supervise work in the three fronts, but no detailed plan was unveiled.
HFMD broke out in China in 2008. A complete cycle of development usually takes four to five years, so the outbreak reached its peak this year.
In June alone, 343,100 people were diagnosed with HFMD, double the number from the same period last year, and 179 died of the disease.
In June, 5,815 cases of measles, including one death, were reported.
This year's spate of violent assaults on school children, and suicides by factory workers raised concerns about China's mental health network.
Apart from disease prevention and control, the ministry vowed to promote rural health services as another major task in order to fulfill the annual health reform plan.
Deng said the objective was to complete health information records for 20 percent of rural residents by the end of the year, giving priority to children, women, the elderly and chronic illness patients.
The ministry would improve rural residents' access to health services by building at least one health clinic in each village, regulating the licensing of rural health practitioners, and selling drugs at rural clinics with a zero mark-up.
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