NHFPC's press conference on May 9,2014

(en.nhfpc.gov.cn)

Updated: 2014-07-15

VII. What’s the update on the H5N6 bird flu after a man in Sichuan died from it?

The man who was initially diagnosed as having pneumonia had contracted the H5N6 virus, which was to date the world's first case of human infection from the virus subtype. Experts believe that it was an individual case because people who had had close contact with him have shown no symptoms, and the risk of further human infection is low. Still, we need to be careful when trying to buy fresh poultry products and keep away from infected dead birds. In addition, we need to get more knowledge on how to prevent and control respiratory diseases. The bird flu strain of H5N6 had previously been detected among birds in Germany, Sweden and the United States, but no human cases were reported. Our latest study shows that the H5H6 virus is actually highly pathogenic to poultry, quite opposite from what was known earlier.

VIII. What is the plan of investing in health education? The central government has been very supportive of improving China’s public health literacy. In 2012, it allocated 238 million yuan ($38.21 million) to fund local government programs in this field. Last year, it was 244 million yuan, which we believe will only be higher this year. There is also other funding, at 35 yuan per head, for improving the basic public healthcare services, including health education. We hope it will be a big boost for the health initiative.

IX. Are Chinese vaccines safe? What would the government do in case a child is disabled by vaccination? China has made tremendous achievements in preventive vaccination since the 1960s when the country started the vaccination policy. At that time, the average life span of Chinese people was only 35 years old. Now it approaches 75 years old. Of course there are a lot of reasons behind this progress, but vaccines contributed a lot. For example, in the late 1950s, one in 100 would get measles every year, which means more than 10 million people by today’s population. Hepatitis B was also highly transmitted at that time. That’s something we cannot imagine today.

There haven’t been any issues concerning abnormal reactions from vaccination. Our vaccines are safely developed and used within a regulatory system validated by the World Health Organization in 2010. But there were and will be occasional occurrences no matter what, especially in a country with such a huge population. The ratio is within the reasonable range set by the WHO, though.

The government attaches great importance to that, and rolled out a guideline several years ago to streamline the process of handling such cases, including emergency measures, rescue work, rehabilitation, diagnosis, compensation and assistance. Local governments are urged to get enough funding for that with timely allocation, and encouraged to resort to commercial insurance in handling such cases. The mechanism will be further improved in the future.

Meanwhile, the provisional health and family planning commission, as well as the food and drug supervision bureau, are required to release information on a regular basis about abnormal reactions, if any, from vaccinations, and results of handling them.