Medical Institutions all over China are urged to adhere to the government policy of putting disease prevention before treatment, instead of the current practice of focusing on treatment of patients and keeping increasing input for this purpose, said some deputies to the legislative National People's Congress (NPC) now in its annual session.
Zhao Kezheng, who is a deputy director of the health bureau of Tianjin, a port city in north China, criticized leaders of some local hospitals for their negligence on disease prevention.
"Some of them are focused on building their hospital into a beautiful place, with less care about disease prevention or sometimes even the treatment of diseases," he said Saturday.
Zhao Luyi, also a NPC deputy from Tianjin, said he agrees with Premier Zhu Rongji in what he said in his government report which calls for great attention to public health and great efforts to prevent and cure diseases such as epidemics and endemic diseases.
While new epidemics are threatening the public health, some epidemics that were once stamped out have made a comeback, said Zhao, who is a member of the Standing Committee of the China Association for Promoting Democracy Central Committee.
Under such circumstances, great attention should be paid to prevention of diseases, which Zhao and many other NPC deputies say costs less than treatment of diseases and reduce the medical spending of the general public.
(People's Daily March 11, 2002)
