Peng Liyuan, Chinese first lady and WHO goodwill ambassador for TB and HIV/AIDS, attends  an activity to publicize World Tuberculosis Day 2019 on Mar 20. [Photo/ en.nhc.gov.cn]

China's End Tuberculosis campaign was launched on Mar 20, four days before the World Tuberculosis Day, in Beijing.

Peng Liyuan, Chinese first lady and WHO goodwill ambassador for TB and HIV/AIDS, attended the event to publicize the 24th World Tuberculosis Day and launch actions to control TB. Li Bin, vice-minister of the National Health Commission (NHC), and Lu Yan, deputy mayor of Beijing, also attended the event.

Prior to the event, Peng visited the Baishan community health services center in Changping district, Beijing, and met with medical workers and volunteers there. She also took part in the community's publicity activities of the World TB Day. Afterwards she went to the Institute for Communicable Disease Control and Prevention of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, visiting the TB reference laboratory and learning about the technologies and equipment for TB diagnosis and tubercle bacillus monitoring.

Li made a speech at the event, saying that the number of TB cases in China keeps declining. The NHC will work with relevant departments to launch a series of actions to control TB. He said he hopes all sectors of society will continue to cooperate to prevent and control TB so that the goal of ending TB can be reached as soon as possible.

Around 300 people attended the event, including experts of TB prevention and control, representatives of different levels of TB prevention and control institutions and the field's international organizations, publicity ambassadors of TB prevention and control, community-level medical workers, volunteers and students.