China on Tuesday kicked off a seminar on preventing and controlling disease-transmitting organisms as part of its painstaking efforts to ensure a safe and successful Olympics in August.

The two-day event gathered some 200 experts and delegates from Olympic hosting cities including Beijing and Qingdao, and the country's major tourist destinations like Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

August would be a month when major disease-transmitting organisms like mosquitoes, flies, cockroaches and rats were at their most active, said the National Committee for Patriotic Public Health Campaign, the seminar's organizer. Their existence might do harm to the Olympic venues and tourist destinations to various degrees.

"Information communications and experience exchanges between different cities will help us better cope with the challenge," said a person in charge of the Committee.

To minimize the chances of an epidemic outbreak during the Olympic Games, the committee has in the past two years stepped up their efforts in preventing and controlling disease-transmitting organisms by sponsoring more training work and carrying out more frequent inspections, he said.

Zeng Xiaopeng, a doctor from the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told Xinhua that the city has since 2005 mapped out a three-year action plan for controlling disease-transmitting organisms for a healthy Olympics. So far a network has been built and a professional team been formed for the job, and a precaution scheme has also been formulated in case of emergencies.

(Xinhua News Agency March 19, 2008)