Studies On Lessons Learned From Public Health Emergency And Corresponding Strategies

The study was a key bid project from the Office of Philosophical and Social Sciences of Zhejiang Province in 2003. Impacts of social development were exerted by public health emergency and construction of public health system and corresponding strategies suited to the actual conditions of China and Zhejiang were discussed in the paper. There were three sections in the paper.1. The epidemic situation of public health emergency, Lessons and experiences learned from SARSThe rate of all deaths due to communicable diseases in the global has dropped from 50%-60% in the nineteen centuries to under 10% in the twenty centuries. But from recent years, the incidence of infectious disease in the global has been great risen. Some emerged and reemerged communicable diseases were constantly epidemic and outbreak.After the "first" case of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was emerged in Fushan city, Guangdong province, China on Nov. 16, 2002, the epidemic situation was once evolved into the global public health crisis because of having not adopted effective measures. 8 422 cumulative SARS cases with 916 deaths were reported from 32 countries or regions until Aug.7, 2003. The fatality rate was 11%. 5 327 cumulative SARS cases with 349 deaths were reported from 266 counties or cities of 24 provinces in China. The reported mortality was 0.026 per 100000, the fatality rate was 6.55%.The epidemic situation of SARS was effectively prevented and controlled after adopting some measures such as intensive international coordination, unimpeded intelligence system of epidemic situation, effective alert mechanism of public health and system of disease control and prevention. Major lessons learned from the SARScrisis were: (1) the importance of preparedness for alert mechanism; (2) official ability to deal with the crisis, that is, political commitment at the highest level would be decisive; (3) the importance of people's right to know about public information and honesty of government; (4) inadequate surge capacity in hospitals and public health systems had clearly been a major problem with SARS; (5) legal location of health, some related regulations including Health Act were need to be revised and updated.The outbreak of SARS in 2003 in China was an inevitable outcome because weaknesses existed in public health system, of which consisted such as: having not enough investment in public health, exposed the structural limitations of existing financial system; serious inequality of health care in regions, cities and villages, social classes; imperfect mechanism of public health emergency response; imperfect system of public health intelligence surveillance and mechanism of public health information report and issuing; having no communication mechasim with the systems of health administration and biomedical research; mistaken, exceeding and lack of location in the government health function; the old work model under new name exposing its backward and delicacy of public health system in China.Modern crisis management organization on public health emergency was not set up before the SARS crisis. There were many disadvantages in the mechanism for crisis management: (1) From the view of system, permanent organization of crisis management was not set up, the crisis response mechanism which having a clear relationship between power and duty was not formulated; (2) From the view of legislation, special legislation security in the nationwide crisis management was not formulated due to having not a overall emergency act and the unified principle of ruling with emergency by law; (3) From the view of prevention, imperfect of the mechanism of crisis alert and fast response; (4) From the view of preparedness, officials and people did not have a strong awareness of crisis, the ability to deal with the crisis as a whole and self-renew was not good.The SARS crisis has led to complex social problems. It has exposed seriousweaknesses in social organizations and corresponding operating mechanisms in China. It was recommende...