No Health, No Comfortable Life: Commentary

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, August 14, 2003

No Health, No Comfortable Life: Commentary

To build a well-off society in an all-round way, it is necessary not only to raise the level of people's material and cultural life, but also improving their health level. Without health, there would be no comfortable life. This is the profound enlightenment we have drawn from the SARS epidemic.

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As the saying goes, "storms gather without warning and bad luck befalls men overnight".

When the people of all ethnic groups of China are united in the endeavor to build a well-off society, the SARS epidemic cast a shadow over the bright spring days of this year, and for a while struck horror into people's hearts, seriously disturbing the normal work, study and life of the people, especially in severely infected areas such as Guangzhou and Beijing. The SARS epidemic caused some losses to the national economic construction, greater losses to industries including transportation, tourism, catering and entertainment. What's worse, it impaired the health of some people and even claimed a number of lives.

The Party Central Committee and the State Council made firm determination and exerted strenuous efforts to lead the people to fight against SARS. At this breath-taking and arduous struggle, the whole Party and the people of the entire country, under the staunch leadership of the Party Central Committee, have persisted in resolutely tackling the major issue of preventing and controlling SARS and unswervingly grasping the central task of economic construction as well, winning double victories in combating SARS and promoting development.

There are close relations between eliminating diseases for good health and promoting development for a comfortable life. To build a well-off society in an all-round way, it is necessary not only to raise the level of people's material and cultural life, but also improving their health level. Without health, there would be no comfortable life. This is the profound enlightenment we have drawn from the SARS epidemic.

Just like the road taken by Monk Xuanzhuang of the Tang Dynasty in his pilgrimage for Buddhist scriptures, the course followed by the Chinese people in their endeavor to build a well-off society in an all-round way has to go through innumerable hazards and hardships and subdue demons and monsters, including vanquishing dangerous illnesses, such as SRAS, and wage struggles against various disasters at all times and all places.

The Chinese people will never forget what a catastrophe the communicable diseases such as malaria, typhoid, tuberculosis and schistosomiasis (or snail fever) caused to old China and how many lives were deprived of by these diseases. At that time the Chinese were dubbed as "the sick man of East Asia" by Westerners. This is an insult, but it also merits our deep thought. On the eve of liberation, the life expectancy of the Chinese people averaged only a little bit over 30 years. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Party and government have attached high importance to the people's health, laying stress on health work in urban and rural areas. As a result, the medical conditions have been greatly improved, and the average life expectancy prolonged to over 70 years.

However, the outbreak and spread of the SARS epidemic revealed that the country's public health system is incomplete and the development of the public health undertakings is lagging. It also exposed a host of problems existing among Chinese people in their hygienic concepts and habits. The people must conscientiously draw a lesson from the SARS epidemic, unceasingly update their hygienic concepts and change their previous unhygienic and uncivilized habits, so as to build an "epidemic-prevention dyke" to guarantee the health of the masses.

Although phased major victory over SARS has been achieved, the pathogen and cause of the disease and its transmission routes are yet to be fully grasped, effective means for diagnosis and treatment of the disease are still lacking, the "riddle" of SARS has yet to be completely solved, and a possible future relapse of this infectious disease should also be guarded against. In the meanwhile, vigilance must be kept against the possible outbreak of other infectious diseases. High attention must be paid to the prevention and control of infectious diseases such as SARS, science should be stressed while superstition be repudiated. It is particularly necessary to intensify efforts to tackle key technical problems in scientific research, so that breakthroughs in fields of diagnosis, treatment, prevention, immunity etc will be made as soon as possible, and powerful weapons against SARS-like infectious diseases finally come within people's grasp.

Only a healthy nation can possibly be a flourishing and promising nation. We Chinese should have confidence and ways to build a well-off society in an all-round way, as well as to improve people's health. We should comprehensively raise the level of China's health work, thereby enhancing Chinese people's physique. We should pay attention to economic growth as well as to social development, and give due consideration to construction and people's livelihood, this is an important principle, as well as a progress in our understanding acquired after SARS.

By PD Online Staff Zhu Lizhen

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