CHINA HEALTH SCIENCES NEWSLETTER
Vol. 4 , No. 14 - August 22, 2003
TOPICS THIS ISSUE:
- Chinese Firm Expected to Invest RM100m in Dengkil Bio-valley
- New Rule For Better Health Service
- Animal ban lifted despite SARS
- Immtech Collaborates With China's Ministry of Health
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 Wendy Zhao at | |
Chinese Firm Expected to Invest RM100m in Dengkil Bio-valley
The bio-valley in Dengkil will receive a boost following an expected RM100 million investment from a Chinese bio-technology company based in Kunming. To seal the agreement and further attract other investors, Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Khir Toyo recently led a State trade delegation on a five- day trip to China.
After launching the State's interactive portal, he said an agreement between the State and the company would be signed during the trip, allowing it to set up a herbal product factory in the valley. The State would also allocate about 2,400ha in Bukit Tunggal, Rawang to grow herbs.
On the trip, he said China was chosen because its bio-technology in herbal products was advanced and modern compared with other countries. He said the delegation would focus on Kunming, Guangzhou and Shenzhen in southern China to attract more investors.
(Source: New Straits Times (Malaysia))
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New Rule For Better Health Service
China's rural population of 800 million people is expected to receive a better primary health service under a newly adopted administrative regulation on the management of medical practitioners in the nation's countryside. All country doctors now have to apply for a certificate, valid for five years, to practise medicine, and they have to re-apply three months after their certificate expires, otherwise they cannot work. An evaluation will also take place before the certificates are issued. Practitioners without the correct paperwork will face punishment ranging from being banned and having income, medical appliances and medicines confiscated, to paying fine or facing criminal charges.
The regulation says the opinions of villagers and village committees should be fully considered when the doctors are being evaluated, which means villagers should get a better service. Specific methods on how to conduct the registration will be worked out by provincial-level governments. Premier Wen Jiabao has signed a decree issuing the Regulation on the Management of Medical Practitioners in the Countryside, which will take effect at the start of 2004.
The regulation aims to improve the professional skills and ethics of country doctors, enhance the management of medical practitioners, protect the legitimate interests and rights of rural doctors, and ensure that villagers have full access to primary medical care. Under the regulation, China also encourages country doctors and their assistants to establish rural medical institutions to offer medical services to villagers.
(Source: China Daily)
Animal ban lifted despite SARS
A ban on the sale of civet cats in China has been lifted despite the creature's possible link to the spread of SARS -- a sign that economic concerns are trumping medical precautions barely a season after the height of SARS. The ban, first imposed at the end of April this year, prohibited the hunting, transport, sale and purchase of most wild animals. It was one of the many sweeping measures China imposed to curb the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome, which first appeared in the southern province of Guangdong in November 2002 before hop-scotching around the globe and infecting thousands.
China's Forestry Administration lifted the prohibition on sale and purchase of 54 types of wildlife -- including civet cats, which have been identified as carriers of the SARS virus -- as long as they are farm-raised. More than 800 people around the world died of SARS, most of them in Asia, before it subsided in June. In mainland China, more than 5,300 people were sickened and 349 died of the disease, with more than half of those in the capital, Beijing, the hardest-hit city in the world.
Researchers have said that while fully cooked civet meat is probably safe, people could become infected while handling the animals during breeding, slaughter or preparation. Many Chinese claim wildlife dishes boost virility and strengthen immunity to disease. Consuming those recipes has become a deep-rooted tradition in the south, a place brimming with live-animal markets and communities where people live in close quarters with animals.
A team of 14 experts from China's health and science ministries, the World Health Organization and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization are in Guangdong to study links between SARS and animals. In coming days, they will visit markets, restaurants, a pig farm and a wildlife farm.
(Source: Deseret News (Salt Lake City, Utah))
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Immtech International, Inc. announced today that its Hong Kong subsidiary, Immtech Therapeutics Limited, has entered into a collaboration with Guo Kang Pharmaceutical & Medical Supplies Limited, the only entity designated as a window company by the People's Republic of China's Ministry of Health, to assist Immtech and its clients in gaining access to China's healthcare market. The window company was established to assist the Ministry with accessing investment and other development opportunities outside of China. Guo Kang is collaborating with Immtech to obtain approvals to introduce DB289, the Company's first oral drug candidate for treatment of infectious diseases, into the PRC. Under the agreement, Guo Kang will assist Immtech Therapeutics in obtaining approvals for Immtech International to conduct human clinical trials of DB289 and in obtaining licenses to manufacture, distribute and sell approved pharmaceutical products in China.
DB289 has shown efficacy in human clinical trials against Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) a serious lung infection affecting immuno-suppressed patients such as those afflicted with AIDS or cancer; and African sleeping sickness (Trypanosomiasis) a parasitic disease affects a population of 60 million in the Sub-Saharan region. DB289 is also under study in a Phase IIa clinical trial for the treatment of Malaria, targeting both Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium falciparium, the two most common and deadly strains of Malaria. The WHO reports that Malaria affects over two billion people (300-400 million new cases annually) and causes two million deaths in the world each year; including 1 million children (i.e. every 30 seconds one child dies from Malaria).
