Xi Jinping says China must strengthen health system after coronavirus pandemic
- Chinese leader says overhaul of monitoring and warning systems are needed after the Covid-19 outbreak exposed shortcomings
- System has been hampered by lack of staff and resources and president said it must be strengthened at the grass-roots level
Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for an overhaul of the country’s public health system, which has been criticised for being ill-prepared for the Covid-19 pandemic that claimed more than 4,600 lives in the country.
In a meeting with delegates to the national legislature from Hubei, the country’s worst-hit province, Xi said addressing and preventing epidemics and other public health crises was a matter of national security and a systematic effort was needed to improve shortcomings, such as epidemic monitoring and warning systems, state media reported on Sunday.
On Friday Premier Li Keqiang said in his annual government report that reforming the country’s disease prevention and control system would be high on the leadership’s agenda this year, alongside other challenges including reviving the economy amid the global recession triggered by the pandemic.
The pandemic has laid bare many problems with China’s disease prevention and control system, which was modelled on its US counterpart and refined in the aftermath of the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak.
These problems included a lack of funding, understaffing in local offices and an inefficient public health reporting system that hampered the response when the first reports of the disease emerged in Wuhan, the provincial capital of Hubei, late last year.
One key problem was that the national Centre for Disease Control and Prevention was powerless to inform the public about a potential pandemic.
