Health teams prepped for disease outbreaks

Beijing has founded two emergency teams to respond to major infectious disease and deal with any incidents of mass poisoning in the country, announced the municipal health authority yesterday.

"The Ministry of Health set up 11 public health emergency teams, and the two in Beijing will be in charge of responding to outbreaks of major infectious disease at home and abroad, or incidents of food or workplace poisoning," said Ma Yanming, spokesman of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Health.

Ma said the teams are composed of 120 medical experts from units like the Beijing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Ditan Hospital and You'an Hospital. Though they will not work full time on the emergency teams, the doctors have been in training since 2005.

"Fortunately, there have been no major outbreaks of medical emergencies in the capital city since 2005, except for several food poisoning incidents and the attack of a pandemic flu [H1N1] in 2009, for which the team also contributed to the control work," said Ma.

According to the release from the health bureau, the selected medical experts also worked in disease control and prevention for the Beijing 2008 Olympics and China's 60th anniversary ceremony, as well as being sent to Sichuan Province after the 2008 earthquake.

"Now the team is up to national standards for emergency response, and will even be sent to other countries, things will be different," noted Ma.

For the two new teams, the ministry equipped them with 229 kinds of advanced medical equipment worth over 21.6 million yuan ($3.4 million).

Yesterday, Beijing reported a 43-year-old died of rabies, the third case this year so far, however, according to Ma, the emergency team is not used in rabies prevention and control.