China is now mobilizing the pubic to participate in the disaster relief process and learn the skills of self-protection.

Yin Dakui, president of the China Doctor Association, said during an ongoing forum on modern emergency medicine that opened Friday in south China's tourist city that disaster relief requires participation by all.

The public should be taught some skills of the emergency aid to help each other in disaster-hit areas.

The three-day China international forum on modern emergency medicine, the third of the kind, opened on Friday in Guilin, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, with more than 400 specialists from across the world attending.

Jiang Yiman, executive vice president of the Red Cross Society of China(RCSC), said the RCSC is currently teaching people how to enswathe, stop blooding, conduct artificial respiration and move the injured.

About 12,000 medical workers have been the trainers and more than 10 million volunteers have attended the training courses, Jiang said.

Li Zonghao, chairman of the Emergency Medicine Society of China Disaster Prevention Association, said with the aim of maintaining social stability, emergency medicine is about rescue outside hospitals and should be encouraged and popularized in China.

Li said cooperation among the public is highly needed during the rescue process. The network of "eyewitness- rescue team- hospital" should be established to boost the cooperation.

Pascal Rey-Herme, group medical director of the SOS International told Xinhua at the forum that the SOS attached great importance to the training of the public on disaster aids and organized various lectures worldwide to boost public awareness on disaster relief so as to reduce the death toll to the least extent.

(Xinhua News Agency October 15, 2005)