China's Ministry of Health recently issued a circular, urging regional bureaus to improve the mechanism to deal with outbreaks of unidentified diseases and step up guard against plague, SARS, and human cases of bird flu.

It calls for preventing plague along the Qinghai-Tibet railway and around major construction projects.

The circular urges summarizing experience in SARS prevention and control, improving preparedness plans and technology solutions so that relevant work will be carried out in a scientific way. It orders improving preparedness plans and technology solutions for human cases of bird flu.

Ample preparations should be made to deal with a large outbreak of flu and relevant government departments should share information on bird flu epidemics timely, it says.

The circular also asked health bureaus to distribute pamphlets to people about how to respond to public health emergencies, which contain tips on how to avoid risks and disasters, how to save themselves and how to save others.

(Xinhua News Agency February 21, 2007)