The public health emergency management system in China: trends from 2002 to 2012

Sun, Mei; Xu, Ningze; Li, Chengyue; Wu, Dan; Zou, Jiatong; Wang, Ying; Luo, Li; Yu, Mingzhu; Zhang, Yu; Wang, Hua; Shi, Peiwu; Chen, Zheng; Wang, Jian; Lu, Yueliang; Li, Qi; Wang, Xinhua; Bi, Zhenqiang; Fan, Ming; Fu, Liping; Yu, Jingjin; Hao, Mo

The average percentages of CDCs with an emergency response office, a leadership group and an expert panel were 95.0%, 95.7% and 96.8% in 2012, respectively. This suggests that a PHPM system with better leadership has been established in China. Soon after the SARS outbreak, Chinese governments at different levels were urged to establish a SARS headquarters at CDCs to shoulder the responsibilities of unified leadership and command during public health emergencies. The Emergency Response Law of the People's Republic of China issued in 2007 formally and strongly stipulated the establishment of the emergency management system that urged unified leadership, comprehensive coordination, categorized management, graded responsibility, and territorial management. The capability for building mechanisms comprised of information sharing, on-site treatment and response-material deployment increased to more than 95% in 2012. Boosted by the SARS outbreak in 2003, various authorities consecutively issued a series of regulations that standardized the PHEMS in terms of macro-level management, professional categories, disposal processes, etc. From the perspective of macro-level management, regulations included emergency management [22] , organizational establishment [23] , coordination mechanisms [24] , etc. From the perspective of professional categories, regulations standardized the responses to nuclear accidents [25] , infectious disease outbreaks [26] , etc. From the perspective of disposal processes, regulations clearly guided emergency response plans [27] , exercising [28] , information reporting [29] , etc.