China is proposing to improve premarital health checkup
regulations, a senior health official said yesterday.
The rate of premarital health checkups in China has dropped from
95 percent to less than?3 percent since the testing became
voluntary in 2003, said Vice Health Minister Jiang Zuojun at a
meeting on women and health care for infants in Hangzhou, capital
of east China's Zhejiang Province.
The decline in testing has made it more difficult to identify
infectious diseases, challenging the well-being of pregnant women
and newborn babies, Jiang said.
Premarital health checks used to be compulsory to obtain a
marriage permit in China. But under the new regulations on Marriage
Registration adopted in October 2003 the process became voluntary.
Given the majority of tests cost money 97 percent of people choose
not to have them.
Some local governments in Zhejiang, Shanghai, Beijing and Shandong have made?relevant check-ups
free of charge.
As a result Zhejiang has seen its checkup rate rise from less
than 1.6 percent in 2004 to 20 percent this year, said Ye Zhen,
vice director of the provincial health department.
South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region has launched
publicity campaigns to spread information about premarital checkups
and some underdeveloped areas have seen a checkup rate of 70
percent, according to the region's health department.
(Xinhua News Agency November 16, 2006)