Vol.4, No.07

CHINA HEALTH SCIENCES NEWSLETTER

Vol. 4 , No. 7 - April 16, 2003

 

TOPICS THIS ISSUE:

• China Launches HIV Insurance for Medical Workers
• Unlocking Life's Secrets
• Healthcare Workers in China Protest Over Hospital Sell-Off Plan
• China: Best Participant in New Drug R&D
• China Milk Poisoning Affecting 3,000 Children

LEHMAN, LEE & XU OPENS SHENZHEN OFFICE Lehman, Lee & Xu is pleased to announce the opening of its new office in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province. Please direct all inquiries to attorney Zdravko Jelic at Room 2119, Science & Technology Building, No.1 Shangbu Middle Road, Shenzhen 518310 China, Tel: +86-755 8367-1598 Fax:+86-755 8367-1698 Email: shenzhen@lehmanlaw.com

China Launches HIV Insurance for Medical Workers

New China Life Insurance Co. Ltd. in Mudanjiang, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, has launched health insurance for medical workers at risk of HIV infection. The insurance service which began last week claims to be the first covering HIV/AIDS in China.

The insured will be required to pay RMB 400 for insurance coverage and will receive RMB 10,000 from the insurer if they are infected with HIV during the course of their employment, the company said recently.

China was estimated to have more than one million HIV carriers by the end of 2002, a number which increases by more than 30% annually, according to the Ministry of Health.

(Source: Xinhua Economic News Service)

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Unlocking Life's Secrets

Chinese scientists are part of a multinational project to develop a genetic haplotype map which is hoped will become a powerful tool to help detect the genetic causes of many diseases such as asthma, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, help improve the design of medicine and lead to the development of diagnostic tools aimed at preventing adverse drug reactions.

Haplotypes are large blocks of DNA that contain the single-letter genetic variations. They are intrinsic and ancestral segments. The genetic variations are known as SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms), which make one person genetically distinctive from others. The differences in SNPs may also make some people more susceptible to a disease compared with others.

The project is built around the soon-to-be-completed Human Genome Project (HGP) - which will produce a blueprint of genetic information shared by all humans.

But it goes further into the genetic differences of individuals, according to Yang Huanming, director of the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) and co-ordinator of the China HapMap Consortium.

If the HGP covers 99.9 per cent of the genetic information that makes us similar, the HapMap deals with the remainder that makes us different, said Yang who, along with his colleagues at BGI and other Chinese institutions, is working on the HGP.

"Only after the completion of the human HapMap will the significance of the human genome be demonstrated to medical research and treatment," Yang said.

The results will be made quickly and will be freely available on the Internet in keeping with the data release approach of the Human Genome Project, said Yang.

(Source: China Daily)

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Healthcare Workers in China Protest Over Hospital Sell-Off Plan

More than 400 healthcare workers in the city of Wafangdan, in the north-eastern province of Liaoning, took part in demonstrations against the city's government plans to privatize its six hospitals. The demonstrators fear that they will lose their jobs as a result of the governments new policy to privatize government-owned institutions in China.

Local governments across northeastern China are suffering from increasing debt problems, which is forcing the government to sell-off state-owned assets. Last year, Liaoning province was the scene of the country's biggest demonstrations since the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989, when an estimated 50,000 workers demonstrated in the cities of Lioayang and Daqing over job losses and government corruption.

(Source: World Markets Analysis)

 

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