China's health services are better prepared against the severe acute respiratory syndrome and are confident of keeping it under control if the disease ever recurs, Vice-Health Minister Huang Jiefu said in Beijing yesterday.

　　China had made significant progress in readying for a public health emergency since early this year, Huang said at a two-day international forum on SARS control and prevention scheduled to end today.

　　"We have greatly improved and strengthened our reaction system to public health emergencies and the public, medical and health staff as well as government officials are also better prepared," said Huang, adding that the ministry has cooperated with the international community and trained a large number of staff.

　　Huang said international cooperation in fighting SARS should be continued and strengthened since the flu-like disease remained a mystery in many aspects.

　　"We still don't know where the virus comes from, neither do we have a SARS vaccine or effective medicine to cure the disease," said Huang.

　　Under the aegis of the World Health Organization, 13 laboratories around the

　　world identified the coronavirus of SARS and that the virus might have come

　　from wildlife, said Huang.

　　Henk Bekedam, WHO representative in China, also called for joint efforts to eliminate SARS. "Globalization makes it easier for a disease in one place to be transferred immediately to other places in the world."

　　"China and the world are better prepared for SARS, but there is still an urgency and opportunity for the international community to join efforts to eliminate the disease so that it won't pose a threat," he said.

　　Another WHO expert, Julie Hall, suggested the organization's member states enforce work in four aspects - rumor investigation, disease survey, risk estimation and an integrated surveillance system.

　　Rumor investigation could help discover the disease at an early stage; disease survey ensured that new diseases would not be ignored; risk estimation helped carry out effective surveillance; and an integrated surveillance system could gather information from all sectors, including clinics, laboratories and food safety monitoring agencies, said Hall.

　　SARS cases were reported in 24 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities in China since the beginning of this year. Until August 16, the number of SARS cases totaled 5,327 on the mainland, including 349 deaths.

　　The forum, which has drawn more than 200 public health experts and medical personnel from home and abroad, is sponsored by the Chinese Ministry of Health and the Italian Foreign Ministry.