An Ethical Reflection on the Public Health Policy in the Post-SARS Era / 中华医学教育探索杂志

ABSTRACT

The mass epidemic of SARS in China during the spring of year 2003 reveals defects in the guidelines for Chinese public health policy. During the marketizing process of Chinese economy, our government neglected the vital importance of public health to national security, which led to insufficient investment in public health, negligence of prophylaxis and lack of effective measures to deal with emergency cases. It constitutes the underlying cause of the mass epidemic of SARS. Therefore, we must amend our public health policy and reconstruct our public health system to secure the ultimate interest of the utmost majority of our people.