On the morning of May 19, 2014, Vice Premier Liu Yandong met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the latter’s office and witnessed the signing of Plan of Action (PoA) on Health Emergency Cooperation between 2014 and 2017 between the NHFPC of the PRC and the Ministry of Health of Israel by Li Bin, minister of the NHFPC, and Yael German, minister of the Ministry of Health of Israel.

Since 1993, when the Chinese and Israeli governments first signed a cooperative agreement in health and medicine, the two countries have signed and renewed their PoA many times, laying a sound foundation for cooperation in health. Now the two countries aim at expanding cooperation in health emergency, telemedicine and simulation medicine. The signing of this PoA will boost their exchange and cooperation in health emergency.

According to the PoA, Chinese and Israeli health departments will, on the basis of equality and mutual benefit, organize medical staff training programs, conduct joint research, and convene academic exchange and seminars, with the purpose of promoting cooperation in capacity building of health emergency teams; construction of an emergency medical rescue system; monitoring and early warning of public health emergencies; prevention and control of acute infectious diseases; construction and application of a health emergency decision-making system; building of multi-sectoral emergency coordination mechanism; and construction of evaluation system of health emergency capacity. These fields of cooperation will greatly improve China’s capacity to deal with major public health emergencies.