Health authority of Shijiazhuang City in Hebei Province said it would continue health checkup on babies fed with baby milk powder to ensure that sick kids could be treated timely.

The city had checked 232,988 children who were born during or after 2006 and were fed baby formula from Sept. 15 to Sept. 26. Out of those checked, 113,767 kids were fed baby formula made by Sanlu dairy group, the company at the heart of the contamination scandal.

A total of 3,650 children were diagnosed as being sicken after drinking baby formula tainted with the chemical melamine, said Wen Honghai, chief of the health department of Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei Province.

Daily checkups decreased from the peak of more than 42,000 babies to 8,750 babies, said Wen.

"We will not loosen checkup so that every sick kid can be treated timely and effectively," Wen said. The government offered free health checkup to babies.

The State Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) announced last Tuesday it had found the chemical melamine in 69 batches of baby milk powder produced by 22 companies nationwide.

The agency issued a watch-list of the 22 companies and their tainted products on the same day. The authorities also ordered a halt to the sale of the products, including the well-known brands of Shijiazhuang-based Sanlu, Mengniu, Yili and Yashili, among others.

Melamine is a chemical used to make plastics. Experts say it was added illegally to watered-down raw milk to make it appear as if there was a high protein content.

The tainted milk is known to have killed at least three babies and left 13,000 others hospitalized with kidney problems in the country.

(Xinhua News Agency September 27, 2008)