From epidemic prevention station to CDC
Original title: From Epidemic Prevention Station to CDC
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, Beijing CDC at all levels, as a front-line professional force, has played an important role in fighting the epidemic. From the initial health and epidemic prevention station to today’s CDC, how did Beijing’s health and epidemic prevention work step into a new era of public health from a blank sheet of paper?
Health and epidemic prevention stations were set up in 1950s.
Before the founding of New China, Beijing’s health and epidemic prevention work was almost blank. Plague, cholera and smallpox all occurred and prevailed, and people’s lives and health were greatly endangered.
After the founding of New China, Beijing attached great importance to health and epidemic prevention, quickly eliminated smallpox and relapsing fever and prevented the occurrence of plague and cholera. Infectious diseases such as diphtheria, whooping cough, measles and polio, which seriously endanger children’s health and life, have also been basically controlled. By the mid-1950s, the focus of health and epidemic prevention in the city had shifted to the prevention of measles, dysentery and Japanese encephalitis.
In October 1953, Beijing Health and Epidemic Prevention Station was established and became the municipal epidemic prevention and health supervision department.
What was the Beijing Health and Epidemic Prevention Station like at that time? On July 11th, 1955, Futang Zhu, a deputy to the National People’s Congress and a pediatrician, published an article entitled "I visited suburban rural areas and health and epidemic prevention work" in the 3rd edition of this newspaper, which wrote that there are three new buildings in the north of the Municipal Infectious Disease Hospital, one is the office of the Beijing Health and Epidemic Prevention Station, the other is the disinfection station, and the other is the passing room and disinfection treatment room. Designed by Soviet experts, it is specially designed to disinfect patients and clothes with infectious germs. It is divided into two parts, men and women, each with a registration room, a barber shop, a dressing room and a bathing room. The two clothes are sent to a central disinfection room from both sides. The high-pressure sterilizer in the disinfection room is as big as a locomotive. If the cotton-padded clothes are disinfected, 150 sets of cotton-padded clothes can be disinfected in about 30 minutes with 10 pounds of steam pressure.
At that time, the function of Beijing Health and Epidemic Prevention Station was to inspect and supervise industrial hygiene, environmental hygiene, food hygiene and school hygiene on the one hand, and to investigate and deal with epidemics on the other hand, to organize large-scale vaccination work, and to organize the masses to carry out patriotic health campaigns and give technical guidance.
Later, the city’s health and epidemic prevention institutions continued to improve and perfect, and district-level health and epidemic prevention stations were also established in various districts. However, due to the limited conditions, in 1950s, epidemic prevention stations in the whole city only carried out irregular supervision and inspection on the hygiene of fur and leather industry and high-temperature workshops and toxic workplaces in related industries with poor working conditions, as well as some food industries, cold drink manufacturing and selling industries, schools and other units, so the depth and breadth of hygiene and epidemic prevention need to be improved. (Beijing Daily, 1st edition, February 28, 1984, "Strengthening Health and Epidemic Prevention in this Municipality and Actively Building a Civilized and Healthy Capital")
2. Organize patriotic health campaign
Among the many tasks organized by health and epidemic prevention stations, the patriotic health campaign centered on "eliminating four pests" in the 1950s and 1960s is probably the most memorable one for the citizens.
According to the newspaper’s 2nd edition of September 6th, 1956, "City and District Epidemic Prevention Stations are Vigorously Killing Mosquitoes and Flies", the city health and epidemic prevention station dispatched a large number of electric spray trucks and motorcycle spray trucks to kill mosquitoes and flies, among which the electric spray trucks only sprayed an area of more than 450,000 square meters in 45 days. Disinfectors in various districts also assisted relevant departments to use drugs to kill flies in garbage dumps and their surrounding households, and shared drugs to spray more than 1,000 houses and more than 30,000 square meters of garbage dumps. In rotten vegetable piles, residents’ outdoor toilets and septic tanks, the epidemic prevention station also uses drugs to kill maggots.
In order to provide scientific basis for the city’s fly control and disease prevention work, the staff of Beijing Health and Epidemic Prevention Station conducted many investigations and studies on fly control. They set up fly index survey points, which are distributed in various parts of the city: some are located in institutions; Some are located next to public canteens; Some are located in the corner of the food processing workshop. Every month and every ten days, the staff should put the fly cages on each investigation point on time, and at the same time bring the caught flies back to the laboratory, identify them by species, register and analyze them respectively, understand the types, living habits and breeding laws of flies, and test the effect of pesticides. (Beijing Daily, 2nd edition, July 6, 1962, Investigation on Fly Killing in Municipal Health and Epidemic Prevention Station)
City and district health and epidemic prevention stations also organized the masses to carry out rodent control activities. The staff of the health and epidemic prevention station investigated the distribution density and reproduction law of rats, summed up some methods and measures to eliminate rats, and promoted them to institutions, factories, schools and so on. Later, this work became a regular health work in the city. (Beijing Daily, 2nd edition, November 1, 1963, Achievements in Rodent Control in this Municipality)
3 prevention and treatment of chronic diseases has gradually become the "highlight"
With the development of the times, the focus of health and epidemic prevention in Beijing has also changed, paying more attention to how to improve people’s health.
In June, 2000, based on the Beijing Health and Epidemic Prevention Station and other units, the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention was formally established, and its functions were expanded to prevent infectious diseases, chronic non-communicable diseases, common diseases of students, emergency response to public health emergencies, national health education, public health protection and many other contents. Since then, district-level CDC has also been established.
The prevention and treatment of chronic diseases has gradually become the "highlight" of disease control. According to the 16th edition of "Beware of the rejuvenation of patients with chronic diseases" published by this newspaper on December 26th, 2001, since 1970s, the disease spectrum of Beijing residents has changed significantly, infectious diseases have been basically controlled, and chronic diseases such as cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases and malignant tumors have become the main diseases threatening Beijing people’s health. In order to control the rising trend of chronic diseases, after 2000, Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention established chronic disease demonstration sites in eight urban areas of the city, and selected representative residential communities to investigate five chronic diseases and behavioral risk factors, including hypertension, diabetes, tumor, coronary heart disease and stroke.
In 2002, the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention randomly selected 1,240 families from the whole city for nutritional and health status survey, and learned about the nutritional status of residents in this city and the incidence of chronic diseases related to it through daily food and nutrient intake, eating habits and other information. (Beijing Daily, 5th edition, August 19, 2002, Fine Calculation of Oil, Salt, Sauce and Vinegar)
Under the scientific guidance of the disease control department, Beijing people’s health concept has become fashionable, and investing in health has become a fashion. Beijing National Physical Fitness Testing Center receives many citizens who come to test their physical fitness every day, spend some money to find out their physical fitness, and let experts tailor a fitness plan for themselves by the way. In the past, vaccination was a "patent" for children. After entering the new century, adults and the elderly have joined the army of injections, and preventing diseases before they happen has also become an investment. (Beijing Daily, 1st edition, October 7, 2002, "Beijingers live ten years longer than one year")
4. Improvement of epidemic reporting system in SARS
In 2003, the sudden SARS epidemic ravaged Beijing. As the main force of prevention and control, the disease control department bravely shouldered the heavy burden.
On April 10, 2003, the first edition of "Extraordinary Warrior" recorded the scene of that year: it was late at night, and the Beijing CDC was still brightly lit. The 60 members of the SARS emergency team are still busy. Several hotlines on the desk kept ringing, citizens kept asking about SARS symptoms and prevention methods, and eight trained business backbones took pains to answer various questions. At the end of the day, everyone has to answer dozens or even hundreds of phone calls, and they are often too tired to even eat. In the health and epidemic prevention emergency command center, the monitoring reports of all districts and counties are collected at any time on the huge screen, and the epidemiological investigation team members summarize the information of the day. If a suspected SARS patient is admitted to the respiratory clinic of a hospital, the epidemic prevention personnel will arrive at the scene half an hour later, and track his upper-level source of infection and close contacts to cut off the source of infection.
In April of that year, a strict epidemic reporting system was established in Beijing. Every hospital has a statistical reporter. The urban CDC should accurately report the epidemic situation to the municipal CDC within 6 hours, and the suburbs should complete this work within 12 hours. (Beijing Daily, 3rd edition, April 26, 2003, "The city has formed a perfect SARS epidemic reporting and prevention and control system")
After SARS, great progress has been made in the construction of epidemic reporting system and system in Beijing. Chen Liquan, then director of the Dongcheng District CDC, said that the hospital could report the epidemic situation directly to the Ministry of Health through the computer network, and at the same time report it to the local grassroots CDC by telephone and fax for epidemiological investigation and handling. The double reporting system makes the information construction of disease control more perfect. (Beijing Daily, 2nd edition, October 13, 2003, "Prevention must be based on SARS")
5. Establish a four-level early warning of infectious diseases.
Due to the continuous discovery of new pathogens and related infectious diseases around the world, the situation of health and disease prevention is grim. Beijing is also striving to build a perfect public health safety system and continuously improve its ability to respond to public health emergencies.
In November 2004, the Emergency Plan for Public Health Emergencies in Beijing was issued, which consists of the emergency plans for public health emergencies such as influenza, avian influenza, plague, cholera and hepatitis, and food poisoning and acute occupational poisoning. The epidemic situation of infectious diseases is divided into four levels according to different intensities, with particularly serious infectious diseases as the first level, major infectious diseases as the second level and major infectious diseases as the third level. The general epidemic situation of infectious diseases is Grade IV, and the corresponding designated hospitals are enabled according to the early warning level, and the corresponding number of beds are enabled according to the intensity of the epidemic, and the clinically diagnosed and suspected patients are treated respectively. (Beijing Daily, 1st edition, November 5, 2004, "Outbreaks will be divided into four levels of early warning")
In 2005, Haidian took the lead in launching a public health safety broadcasting system in China, which provided early warning of infectious diseases, food poisoning, occupational poisoning and drinking water pollution incidents according to various public health events over the years. (Beijing Daily, 6th edition, February 28th, 2005, "Public Health Safety Broadcasting System Launched in Haidian")
Drawing lessons from SARS, Beijing’s public health construction has been carried out step by step. Since then, Beijing has taken the lead in the prevention and control of avian influenza, influenza, norovirus and hand, foot and mouth disease. Today’s Beijing has entered a new era of public health.
(Text: Jia Xiaoyan’s historical data: Jingbao Group graphic database, Xinhua News Agency)