China saw fewer work-related accidents and fatalities last year as government regulators strengthened inspections and penalties. Still, there are more potential safety hazards as the economy develops and urbanization continues, the work safety authority said.About 53,000 work-related accidents occurred in the country last year, a decline of 16.2 percent from 2016. Those accidents killed 38,000 people, down 12.1 percent, Wang Yupu, minister of the State Administration of Work Safety, said on Monday.The number of extremely severe accidents declined from 32 in 2016 to 25 last year, and fatalities in these accidents decreased since 2016 by 228 to 342, Wang said at a national work safety conference.Most of these accidents occurred in coal mines and road transportation and because of workplace fires, Wang said.Accidents are classified as extremely severe if they result in more than 30 deaths or severely injure more than 100 people, or cause direct economic losses of more than 100 million yuan ($15.6 million).The improvement occurred thanks to enhanced inspections and penalties, Wang said. Work safety authorities conducted more than 4.6 million on-site inspections last year and the fines they imposed increased by about 58 percent from 2016 to about 3.3 billion yuan, Wang said.He said 805 people were held accountable for 26 extremely severe accidents and 334 of them have been referred to prosecutors.In a four-month national work safety inspection last year, 63,000 enterprises were forced to suspend production and another 31,000 were shut down altogether, he added.The country has seen more challenges in work safety controls as the economy develops and urbanization continues, he said.About 43 million people, the population of a medium-sized country, travel in China every day. A total of 1 billion metric tons of hazardous chemical substances are transported in the country each year, he said.Population and industries are increasingly concentrated in urban areas. While sizes of Chinese cities continue to expand, industrial structures in the urban areas are more and more complicated, he said, adding some new forms of industries may fall beyond regulation, which increases risks.Workers' skills and work safety consciousness fail to improve with the rapid industrialization, he said. The high staff turnover in many factories also results in inadequate work safety training.Huang Yuzhi, head of the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety, said about 28 percent of coal mines have an annual output of less than 90,000 metric tons and have more safety hazards than larger mines.While 6,100 coal mines were closed in 2017, his administration will draft plans to weed out more small-scale mines in 2018.He also calls on coal mines to move to intelligent mining facilities and remote control systems to reduce the number of workers involved and to enhance [email protected]24 hour wristbandimprinted rubber braceletscustom name bar braceletcheap silicone bracelets canadacustomized bracelets
China has set up a national work group for immunization planning that will suggest ways to ensure vaccines are safe, the head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said on Monday. The work group, led by a vice-minister of health, will analyze all incidents involving vaccine safety over the past few years to find the root sources of problems, Gao Fu, head of the center, said at a news conference. He didn't name the minister. Vaccines made in China are some of the best in the world, said Gao, who is also a member of China's top political advisory body. We should have no doubt about the role of vaccines in disease prevention or the quality of vaccines made in China. For example, he said, by promoting immunization, some infectious diseases that once seriously harmed people's health in China, such as smallpox, have been eliminated. Hepatitis B once infected more than 10 percent of the population of China, but now only 0.3 percent of children under 5 years old are carriers because of mandatory immunization. Gao made the comments in light of a series of incidents involving vaccine safety over the past few years. In a major scandal last year, Changchun Changsheng Life Sciences, a vaccine producer in Changchun, Jilin province, faked production records and used expired material for the production of rabies vaccines over the past four years. The company was ordered to suspend production, and senior executives were detained and face criminal charges. The company was ordered to pay fines of 9.1 billion yuan ($1.3 billion) for violations, one of the heaviest fines imposed on a pharmaceutical company over the past few years. Following the revelations, top officials vowed harsh penalties and reform of the vaccine supervision system to eliminate loopholes. A new law on the management of vaccines was drafted for review. Fang Laiying, former head of the Beijing Municipal Health Commission, said he has faith in the overall safety of drugs in China, but individual cases involving violations of the law can tarnish the image of the whole pharmaceutical sector. The government is intensifying its efforts in cases involving violations of drug safety laws, including severely punishing criminals and setting up strict accountability systems to improve supervision of the sector, he said. Gao, the CDC head, said major infectious diseases such as dengue fever and AIDS will continue to be the priority in disease prevention and control this year. We will improve health education for the public, including promoting HIV prevention and providing more information to college students, he said. We will also focus on some impoverished regions to help residents improve disease prevention to help them rise out of poverty.
