Health cooperation deepens mutual understanding along Belt and Road
The Belt and Road Forum for Health Cooperation is going to be held in Beijing on Aug 18. This represented the Chinese health authorities' latest efforts to build the healthy Silk Road as President Xi Jinping called for under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2016.
The National Health and Family Planning Commission and the World Health Organization also signed an agreement for a program on health cooperation along the Belt and Road routes in May.
The commission issued a Belt and Road health cooperation plan (2015-2017) three years ago. Since then, China has initiated 38 cooperation projects in the health sector with the countries taking part in the Belt and Road Initiative.
China cooperates with countries in the Greater Mekong Sub-region on the prevention and control of AIDS, malaria, dengue fever, plague, avian influenza, flu and tuberculosis, and works with countries in Central Asia on the prevention and control of echinococcosis and plague, and collaborates with countries in West Asia to eliminate polio.
China has developed an information exchange mechanism dealing with common and emergent acute infectious diseases with countries along the Belt and Road routes, strengthened joint prevention and control work with neighboring countries on the cross-border transmission of infectious diseases, and has established emergency disposal and coordination mechanism on serious infectious disease epidemic situations.
After the outbreak of the Ebola disease in Africa in 2014, China organized disease prevention and control medical units immediately and sent them to the most seriously-affected regions to help the locals.
Over the past two years, China has sent medical units to Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Sri Lanka and Maldives, doing cataract operations on more than 5,200 patients for free.
Guangdong Province has dispatched medical teams to carry out cataract operations for the inhabitants in Fiji, Tonga, Micronesia, and Vanuatu.
China also shares its experience in public health with countries along the Belt and Road routes through various exchange and cooperation programs.
China offers medical science trainings for doctors from relevant countries. Some provinces and autonomous regions in China have built special medical talent training bases, such as Xinjiang, Guangxi, Yunnan, Heilongjiang, Fujian and Inner Mongolia.
China actively takes the lead in establishing a hospital and public health agency cooperation network between China and Central and Eastern European countries so as to strengthen exchanges and cooperation among medical scientists and researchers.
It is believed that health cooperation can deepen mutual understanding and trust of different peoples and thus plays an indispensable role in the Belt and Road Initiative.
