China sets up new, more powerful national disease control agency

Bureau will be responsible for developing policies to prevent and control infectious diseases and overseeing alert systems

It follows calls for reform, including President Xi saying Covid-19 had exposed long-standing issues in the health system

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The coronavirus pandemic prompted calls to reform the disease prevention and control system. Photo: AFP

Published: 6:00am, 14 May 2021Updated: 6:35am, 14 May 2021

China launched a new national disease control bureau with more power on Thursday, according to state media, in a move aimed at improving the system to better prevent future outbreaks and safeguard public health.

Wang Hesheng – an official who was last year sent to coordinate the fight against the coronavirus in Hubei province, where the first cases were detected – has been appointed head of the new National Administration for Disease Control and Prevention, the State Council said in a notice.

According to multiple reports citing doctors and health officials, local authorities in the province are believed to have interfered with direct reporting of the novel coronavirus in the epicentre, Wuhan, delaying efforts to contain the spread of the virus after it emerged in late 2019.

Since the outbreak was largely brought under control in China there have been calls to reform the disease prevention and control system, with President Xi Jinping saying in June that the virus had exposed long-standing issues in the health system.

Wang Hesheng has been appointed head of the new agency. Photo: Weibo

“China’s public health system has played important functions. However, when faced with a major epidemic, problems such as [the system] not being powerful enough, not flexible enough, not agile enough and the insufficient integration between prevention and treatment, were exposed,” Xi told health experts in Beijing last year, according to Communist Party journal Qiushi.