China will help Africa with its public health system post-Ebola, saida Chinese official on Friday at a China-Africa health roundtable.
Lin Songtian, director of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s African Affairs Department, madethe remarks at the three-day Fifth International Roundtable on China-Africa HealthCollaboration held in Beijing, which will end Saturday.
Lin said China was studying the support it could offer Africa, adding China will help theAfrican Union build a disease prevention and control center, which would link epidemicsurveillance facilities in each member countries.
In terms of capacity building, Lin suggested that more scholarships could be granted toAfrican health professionals and students for them to study in China, as well more trainingoffered to Chinese health aid workers dispatched to the African continent.
A policy recommendation on China-Africa health cooperation was put forward at theroundtable, which included suggestions such as the two sides should boost cooperation inmedicine and vaccine production, diagnostics, health financing instruments, andenhanced dialogues and knowledge exchange.
Ren Minghui, director of the department of international cooperation of the NationalHealth and Family Planning Commission, said China had a unique role to play insupporting African health development as it was capable of producing high-quality andlow-cost medicines and vaccines.
China was among the first to deliver Ebola emergency aid to the region. Medicalprofessionals, lab technicians and public health specialists soon followed.
FRENCH VERSION
