Introducción de alternativas a la lucha contra las enfermedades infecciosas en China

China, officially known as the People‘s Republic of China (PRC), is a sovereign state located in East Asia. Being the world‘s most populous country with an approximate population of 1.35 billion people, we are one of the biggest trading partners of the world, specially and not limited to our big manufacturers and multiple businesses ranging from food all the way to electronics, also our high number of emigrants.

Ever since the SARS outbreak of 2003 we have implemented many communicable disease control alternatives, because it forced us to make a health system reform when we upped the physical infrastructure, staffing and funding of our health sector. Because of this we made a series of steps to better our country‘s health starting with making a revision of the law on infectious diseases where we mandated the reporting of 37 conditions; development of a new electronic notifiable disease reporting system alongside with a number of disease-specific, donor and particularly government funded initiatives that have helped to increase the commitment to communicable disease control in China.

In the unfolding current crisis, Ebola, we are mounting one of our largest aid operations ever for one of our biggest allies Africa. About 200 medical workers and advisers from our country have been sent to three West African countries that are currently fighting the Ebola outbreaks (Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea). Among the selected 200 people there is people from China Communicable Disease Control and medical personnel from Beijin‘s 302 Military Hospital (they took the lead during the 2003 SARS Outbreak). Besides sending many of our best men to fight the crisis we are also building treatment centers (including hiring staff for it) and sending supplies within the next month.

When it comes to controlling the propagation of the disease within our own country we are monitoring the symptoms of every person that comes from the Ebola-affected countries: we screen them for fever and monitor them for 21 days, which is the maximum time from infection to onset symptoms of the actual disease. As of the day I am writing this 88 people have been identified with fever, however none of them has actually been diagnosed with Ebola.

As stated before, ever since the reform of the health system we have had success controlling or minimizing all sorts of outbreaks of communicable diseases ranging from those animal based ones like the H1N1 and the common HIV/AIDS virus; so one of our main proposals is to implement our system in the world so we can better life expectancy and lower the mortality. This system consists of vaccination from an early age, funding to improve the staffing and physical infrastructure of the country’s own health system, implementation of a notifiable disease reporting system (incorporating notifiable diseases, risk factors, emergencies and also specific systems for reporting certain diseases

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