Margaret Chan, director-general of WHO, hands the certificate and team flag to the Chinese international emergency medical team from Guangdong on May 26.

The Chinese international emergency medical team from Guangdong was officially named as an authorized international emergency medical team, the WHO announced at the 70th World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, on May 26.

Chinese international emergency medical team (Guangdong) was formerly the national emergency medical team of Guangdong Second Provincial General Hospital. 

As such it had carried out health security work including a number of emergency medical rescue missions for large-scale events and international meetings. 

Representing the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC), it completed the fourth disaster relief exercises of the ASEAN region in Malaysia in 2015. 

The team is rich in professional skills, self-protection ability and emergency rescue experience. It is equipped with a vehicular mobile hospital and mobile tent hospital.

All its rescue processes have been standardized and institutionalized by the medical team to ensure it can assemble and be ready to fly to a recipient country within six hours. 

The medical team has many innovative inventions to its credit, such as making rescue equipment lighter, smaller and smarter to aid aircraft transport and long distance delivery. 

Tian Junzhang, the group's leader, was honored to learn of his team's authorization by the WHO. 

"Chinese international emergency medical team (Guangdong) will further improve medical rescue systems and emergency response capability to play its role in international emergency medical rescue," he said. 

Tian made a commitment on behalf of all the team members that Chinese international emergency medical team (Guangdong) will always be ready to carry out emergency medical rescue missions under the unified arrangement of the Chinese government and the WHO. 

The international emergency medical team from Shanghai was designated as among the first such teams by Margaret Chan, director-general of WHO, at the 69th World Health Assembly on May 23, 2016.