Vice-minister Xu Ke visits Jiangsu, Hunan for blood flukes prevention and treatment work

(chinadaily.com.cn)

Updated: 2014-06-25

Xu Ke, vice-minister of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, visited Jiangsu and Hunan provinces from May 22-26 to inspect local blood flukes prevention and treatment work. Xu made her way to Yangzhou city’s Guazhou and Puxi towns and Tuqiao village, and Yueyang city’s Xiangbin town and Xinglong village to study the development of local irrigation canals and ditches, alternative breeding, grazing prohibition, drinking water, lavatories, fishery management and snail control. She also listened to work reports by the blood flukes prevention and treatment leading groups in Jiangsu and Hunan.

The inspection team spoke highly of the blood flukes prevention and treatment work over the past year, and asked the two provinces to prevent the spread of the disease and achieve the disease control task by the end of 2014 by taking various effective and forceful measures and setting things in order. At the same time, Xu asked all parties to pay special attention to possible future challenges, strengthen leadership and step up work efforts to meet national planning goals as scheduled.

Xu stressed that blood flukes prevention and treatment is important to safeguard and improve people’s life and health quality. The work should be carried out long term. Xu urge the two provinces to be fully aware of the difficulties and complexity of the work; continue to focus on curbing infection sources; and make full use of agriculture, water, land, forest and health and family planning resources to deal with the disease. Xu also called for enhanced disease monitoring and early warning, emergency treatment, and early detection and treatment. The two provinces were asked to build lean, effective and professional blood flukes prevention and treatment teams, strengthen business training, publicize prevention and treatment knowledge, and lead the public to have a healthy lifestyle and join the prevention and treatment work.

Officials and experts from the Ministry of Water Resources, the Ministry of Agriculture, the National Health and Family Planning Commission, and the State Forestry Administration were present during the inspection.