New agency to promote public health

China announced on Wednesday that it has appointed Wang Hesheng, who is vice-minister of the National Health Commission, as head of a new central-level disease prevention and control agency.

Wang, director-general of the newly established administration, had been appointed head of the Hubei Provincial Health Commission during the height of the domestic COVID-19 outbreak early last year. He left the post in July, but remains as a standing committee member of the Communist Party of China Hubei Provincial Committee.

The new agency, the National Administration of Disease Prevention and Control, will be administered by three deputy directors-general, according to the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.

They are Chang Jile, current director of the commission's Bureau of Disease Prevention and Control; Shen Hongbing, president of Nanjing Medical University in Nanjing, Jiangsu province; and Sun Yang, head of the commission's Health Emergency Response Office, which is in charge of organizing emergency medical aid and stepping up preparedness for public health threats.

The establishment of the central administration marks the latest move by China to build a strong public health system, a leading expert said. The focus has been on strengthening disease surveillance and early warning capabilities, reforming the country's disease control system, and improving treatment networks, among other aspects.

Li Ling, head of the China Health and Development Research Center at Peking University's National School of Development, said that compared with other high-level disease control authorities, the agency is expected to hold more administrative powers and stronger leadership.

"Apparently the COVID-19 pandemic will hardly be eliminated in the short term, as its ferocious spread in India at present has shown. So in the short term, the new agency could help China better devise and implement virus-control measures against the disease," she said.

"The emergence of COVID-19 has also underscored the significance of improving preparedness against potential viral threats in the future," she said. "The new administration will be tasked with spearheading long-term reform plans in the future, which again attests to the great deal of attention and emphasis given to the public health sector from the country's central leadership," she said.

All four of the senior officials have demonstrated competency in dealing with public health challenges and have rich experience in the broader healthcare sector.

Wang, 60, majored in public health at Tianjin Medical University. Before becoming vice-minister of the National Health Commission in 2016, he mainly worked at the health authority in Tianjin.

At the commission, he is in charge of drug and healthcare reform, as well as medical administration and supervision. He was also deeply involved in guiding and supervising the front-line battle against COVID-19 in Hubei, making a number of visits to hospitals treating COVID-19 patients and community health centers, as well as giving key instructions on virus-control measures, according to media reports.

Chang, one of the new deputy directors-general, had worked at a local hospital and the provincial health authority in Gansu province before heading the commission's disease prevention and control bureau.

Deputy Director-General Shen is a university president as well as a prominent expert in epidemiology. Deputy Director-General Sun is also a former president of China-Japan Friendship Hospital in Beijing.