Government and Policy

China to order a halt to pre-employment HB screening

By Shan Juan (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-12-29 15:08

The Chinese government is set to remove hepatitis B (HB) screening from the pre-enrollment/employment medical examination to root out education and job discrimination against hundreds of millions of HB carriers in the country, a senior health official said yesterday.

Once the regulation is enacted, school and job candidates would skip the HB screening before enrollment or employment, said Mao Qun'an, spokesman of the Ministry of Health yesterday.

However, for high-risk occupations like human blood collecting and supply, the test would remain as an enrollment condition for the sake of public health, he noted.

"Health institutions would face punishment from the health authority if found administering HB screening to education and job candidates of ordinary professions," he said.

Currently, more than 100 million people in China are infected with the HB virus, which WHO said is transmitted only through blood transfusions, sexual contact or childbirth, official statistics showed.

Many of them suffered groundless discrimination and even rejection in social life, particularly in school enrollment and employment, experts said.

"The still-rife discrimination caused mainly by lack of knowledge is unfair for sufferers and leads to a waste of human resources," Mao said.