The Standing Committee of the 10th National People's Congress
(NPC)
is in a second round of deliberation over the revised draft
amendment to the 1989 Law on the Prevention and Control of
Infectious Diseases.??
The revised version of the draft requires the prevention and
control of infectious diseases to be written into the country's
economic and social development plan, a first for the nation.
The newly added clause is intended to ensure adequate financial
support to combat epidemics. This is key to oiling the wheels of
disease prevention and control, said Hu Guangbao in a report
submitted to the legislature on Monday.
Hu, vice director of the NPC's Law Committee, said the second
version of the draft pools the opinions of lawmakers, experts and
officials and contains several major improvements over the
preliminary version reviewed by the legislature in early April.
Hu said the revised version also places a new obligation on the
central government: providing medical aid to low-income groups and
reducing or abolishing their treatment charges.
The draft also sets new tasks for local governments above the
county level. These include ensuring special funds for contagious
disease prevention in townships, villages and urban
communities.
The amendment reinforces the establishment of contagious disease
prevention systems at the grass-roots level, especially in rural
areas, traditional weak points in China's epidemic prevention
system.
Township governments are expected to assume more responsibility
by organizing local efforts in disease control and prevention, and
residents' and villagers' committees--the foundation of the
government structure--will be required to mobilize people to
participate in the fight against epidemics.
By clarifying the duties of governments at various levels in
contagious disease prevention and control, the draft is expected to
improve coordination between the central and local authorities in
such areas as epidemic reporting.
The new draft deletes an existing clause that gives the State
Council the right to designate Class One infectious diseases, the
highest rank of communicable disease.
Other revisions include prohibiting discrimination against
patients suffering infectious diseases, protecting individuals'
privacy and strengthening virus controls in laboratories.
The country's lawmakers yesterday also deliberated on a revised
draft law on electronic signatures that gives online signatures the
same legal status as those penned on paper.
An online signature is an electronic signature that can be used
to authenticate the identity of the sender of a message or the
signer of a document.
As Internet trade requires a reliable third party to identify
the signers, the credibility of online certifying organizations is
significant for transaction security. The draft law requires that
institutions seeking to provide identification services for online
signers receive approval from designated government
organizations.
The revised draft also extends the retention period for
electronic signatures to five years from the previous two.
(China Daily June 23, 2004)