Li stresses improved sanitation to prevent epidemics

BEIJING - Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Wednesday instructed the government to improve sanitation facilities to prevent epidemics.

The government should also invest more in community and village clinics and increase people's awareness of healthy lifestyles and disease control, wrote Li in an instruction to a meeting on sanitation improvement and epidemic control.

Local governments are urged to improve waste and sewage processing facilities and to upgrade sewage networks and public toilets, said Vice-Premier Liu Yandong, who is in charge of the work, at the meeting.

They will also work with villages, communities, schools, businesses and the military to raise public awareness, she said.

The government will try its best to step up disease control and prevent major epidemic outbreaks during the upcoming spring, she added.

The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention warned Tuesday that much of the country will enter active flu season in the next two to three weeks.

Several provinces in south and east China have reported human infections of H7N9 avian flu.

The health department of East China's Shandong province confirmed Tuesday that an H7N9 avian flu victim died in the province.

In South China's Guangdong province, the number of H7N9 cases has reached 12 since the beginning of 2015. In Southeast China's Fujian province, 15 such cases were reported this year, with two deaths. Zhejiang and Shanghai have also seen H7N9 cases.