[Photo/IC]

For the past 40 years, giving priority to prevention and combining it with treatment has been the policy and main content of China's medical and health undertakings. Currently, health services are greatly improved and cover the whole lifetime of every ordinary Chinese resident, ranging from infectious diseases prevention and control, chronic diseases management, to basic and major public health service projects.

When it comes to the prevention and control of infectious diseases in China, the SARS outbreak in 2003 must be mentioned. Wang Yu, then director of the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, was working days and nights with countless disease control and medical colleagues to fight SARS. After that crisis China's disease prevention and control systems rapidly developed, especially as regards an infectious disease direct reporting system and monitoring stations, greatly improving epidemic monitoring.

Drawing on the lessons of SARS, the subsequent pandemic of HINl and H7N9 avian influenza were detected early and patients were diagnosed and treated timely. Take the epidemic HINl in May 2009 as an example. China’s health system and the infectious diseases control system paid great attention to the first virus carrier. The test kit was developed within 72 hours, and then the world's first HINl vaccine was successfully developed. The early intervention minimized the epidemic’s influence.

In the 40 years of reform and opening-up, China's public health system has been rapidly improving, and we have the ability and confidence to protect people's health, said Wang.

Cancer is an unavoidable topic when it comes to chronic disease management. Early diagnosis and treatment of cancer not only lead good prognosis, but can also generate obvious economic benefits. Accurate screening and standardized treatment of early cancer at all levels of medical institutions is improving.

China's three-year prevention and treatment program for malignant tumors has been launched, and a nationwide cancer prevention and treatment network is taking shape with the leading of the National Cancer Center. Currently, 21 provincial regions have established provincial cancer centers. Through extensive publicity about cancer prevention and control, the awareness rate in China has reached 60 percent. In addition, a cancer registration system by hospitals and people themselves is being developed.

 “Detecting one case of early-stage cancer means saving a life and even a family. We should go together on the long anti-cancer road,” said He Jie, president of the Cancer Hospital Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and director of the National Cancer Center.