Cui Li, vice-minister of the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) met with Dr. Donald K. T. Li, president of the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine, and WHO experts on health emergency response in Beijing on April 5. The two sides exchanged ideas on how to design disaster rescue training courses based on WHO’s standards. 

Cui said that the NHFPC has cooperated with the health departments of Hong Kong and Macao in health emergency information sharing, prevention and control, personnel exchange and training since 2005. Cui also said that the NHFPC is willing to work with WHO to set up a global health emergency response team, which would not only upgrade Chinese health emergency response teams’ abilities but also enable the NHFPC to share its experience in that area with WHO. 

Dr. Li said that Hong Kong is willing to cooperate with the mainland in training professional management personnel in health emergency response to promote the construction of the mainland’s public health emergency response system.

Also taking part in the meeting were officials from the NHFPC’s Health Emergency Response Office, the Office of Hong Kong, Macao & Taiwan Affairs and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.