From Our
Correspondent
BEIJING: Over the past seven years, Chinese President Xi Jinping has on various occasions stressed the importance of global health cooperation, expressed China’s support for international health organizations, and voiced the country’s determination to help improve global health governance.
His remarks on global public health in recent years, especially in the last few months, have become particularly meaningful as countries worldwide mark the 2020 World Health Day on Tuesday amid a raging COVID-19 pandemic.
Back in 2013, during a meeting with then World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan in Beijing, Xi said China will continue to improve public health and enhance cooperation with the WHO.
He also expressed his hope that China and the WHO could work closer to help promote Chinese medicine and medical products into overseas markets, and jointly assist African countries to improve their disease control and public health systems to meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.
In March 2015, Xi pointed out in a meeting in China’s Hainan province with Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that preventing and controlling public epidemics is a common challenge to the international community and requires strengthening international cooperation on joint control.
Two years later, during his trip to Switzerland, Xi paid a special visit to the WHO headquarters, in which he co-witnessed with Chan the signing of a memorandum of understanding between China and the WHO pledging to step up health cooperation under the framework of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative.
During the meeting with Chan, Xi noted that China stands ready to enhance cooperation with the WHO in implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and assisting other developing countries.
Also in 2017, in his congratulatory letter to a meeting of BRICS countries’ health ministers, Xi called on relevant parties to study work in the field of traditional medicine and make joint efforts to tackle public health challenges.
