China's Ministry of Health (MOH) has issued a plan to ensure
that newborns and other vulnerable groups stay away from hepatitis
B in the next five years.
According to the 2006-2010 national hepatitis B prevention and
control plan, the positive rate of all Chinese will be reduced to
less than 7 percent and that of children under five years old one
percent by 2010.
Vaccinating children is highlighted by the plan as a major
strategy to fight hepatitis B. It is expected that the vaccination
rate of newborns will reach beyond 90 percent by 2010. About 95
percent of children born after 2002 who have not been injected will
be immunized.
China has not officially released statistics on the numbers of
hepatitis B patients and virus carriers, but according to estimates
by experts cited by the MOH, there are 20 million chronic hepatitis
B patients.
Liu Shijin, member of the China Association of Integrative
Medicine, reckoned that China has 130 million hepatitis B virus
carriers, meaning one out of ten people is infected.
The plan promises to set up sound systems to monitor hepatitis B
prevalence, the vaccination rate of newborns and infections in
high-risk groups.
It also requires all medical institutions to eliminate spread of
the virus by blood transmission, which together with sexual
intercourse and mother-to-child transmission are the three major
channels to diffuse the virus.
In January alone, 493 people died of 27 infectious diseases in
the mainland, with tuberculosis, rabies and hepatitis B as the top
killers.
Despite the optimistic tone of the new plan, the MOH admitted
that China's hepatitis B prevention and control efforts "fall far
short" of increasing public health demands.
It blamed local governments for failing to pay due attention and
give sufficient funding to the work, fake medical advertisements
for misguiding patients and irregular medical treatment
practices.
(Xinhua News Agency February 14, 2006)