By Guo Chen

BEIJING, May 26 -- As a military deputy to the 13th National People’s Congress (NPC), Chen Xiangmei, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) who works in the General Hospital of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), believes that how to deal with the outbreak of new infectious diseases, especially how to improve the prevention and control measures to new infectious diseases from a legal perspective has being emerging as a major and urgent task.

At present, China has only unsystematic laws and regulations targeting at public health and medical administration, including the Law of the People's Republic of China (PRC) on the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases, Frontier Health and Quarantine Regulations of the PRC, and Regulations on Preparedness for and Response to Emergent Public Health Hazards from China. However, it is quite difficult to coordinate these legal acts in terms of detailed rules and regulations.

In this regard, Academician Chen Xiangmei said she believes that the existing laws and regulations in public health should be sorted out, and a specified national public health law should be promulgated to systematically prevent and respond to public health emergencies and safeguard the security of people.

Around the above, she put forward three suggestions:

First, accelerating the research on the basic law of public health, to systematically standardize and optimize the response mechanism for major public health emergencies, and to improve the proactive emergency response system;

Second, with regard to public health emergencies, such as new infectious diseases, major natural disasters and chemical accidents, the coordination mechanism among health administrative departments, epidemic prevention departments, medical institutions and scientific research units shall be clarified, to ensure quick and effective identification and report of emergencies, and prompt measures are taken;

Third, hunting for and eating wild animals are supposed to be included in the new national public health law.