Expert Forum 1

Care for Overall Health of Youth

According to data from five national health surveys on Chinese students conducted between 1985 and 2005. There is a steadily deteriorating health condition over the past 20 years,"

The obesity rate of students rose significantly. Nearly one in four boys in China 's cities is now overweight. 58% of middle school students are short-sighted, with the rate rising to 76 per cent of high school students and 83 per cent of college students. Chinese students' lung capacity, muscle flexibility and strength decline, when their height and weight continue on an upward curve.

In contrast, Chinese athletes have achieved great fruits in various international games. The number of Chinese Olympic gold medals increased from 15 in 1984 to 32 in 2004. In fact, a country's elite sports mechanism has little to do with the whole nation's health conditions. Comparing the situation with some other countries, the total expenditures by Russia on four years of Olympic preparations are about RMB800 million (US$99 million), or RMB25 million (US$3.09 million) for each gold medal. As for Japan , United States and many European countries, governments' input to preparation of Olympic Games can almost be omitted because they invest only in popular sports, not competitive sports.

If China can transfer some of the money it invests in elite athletic sports to popular sports, the health conditions of Chinese youth probably would not deteriorate like this.

Elite sports should have guided and promoted popular sports activities. But under the current gold medal strategy, popular sports are ignored. Some schools do not even have standard sports fields or facilities.

Obviously, popular sports and public health conditions should be valued over athletic sports and gold medals. Health is a basic human right. It is also an important social index for people to have high health levels. If the health conditions of hundreds of millions of youth continually deteriorate, it is meaningless to build an athletic sports power with only a few elite athletes.

Expert Forum 2

Medicinal Herbs Short of Supply

Chinese medicinal herbs are currently in short supply with annual demand soaring to 600,000 tonnes, four times of ten years ago. The demand for natural medicinal herbs has been enhanced by improved awareness of health and healthcare in an aging society.

The market demand for traditional Chinese medicine had kept a 15-percent annual increase over the past ten years. However, the crop area of medicinal herbs dropped from 270,000 ha . in 2003 to less than 200,000 ha . in 2004, because of the short supply of wild seeds.

It is estimated that at least 340,000 ha . of cropland is needed to meet the demand, but there is a shortage of about 80 of 400 commonly used herbs.

The latest national research on natural herb resources found that China has 11,118 kinds of herbs with medicinal effects. The State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine claimed that about 60 to 70 percent of the 3,000 endangered plants in China had medicinal effects. The protection and exploration of wild herbs was the key to sustaining China 's pharmaceutical industry.

Customs figures show that China exports 240,000 tonnes of medicines annually, of which 200,000 tonnes are raw herbs. The exported raw herbs accounted for 20 percent of the country's annual harvest. China exported its traditional medicines to 164 countries and regions in 2005, with export earnings reaching a record USD830 million.

The export earnings represented a 14.55 percent increase from the previous year. However, most of the earnings came from exports of low value-added extracted herbal substances and raw materials.

In China , more than 3,000 enterprises are engaged in traditional Chinese medicine processing. In 2004, the industry generated RMB90 billion (USD11.1 billion) in output value, accounting for 26 percent of China's entire pharmaceutical section.

China has 2,868 registered hospitals specializing in Chinese medical science, employing more than 270,000 herbalist doctors.

Expert Forum 3

Production of Glucono-delta-lactone is Stable

Glucono-delta-lactone is a kind of ramification of sugar or gluconate. In recent years, the development of glucono-delta-lactone has been stable in China , and in future the growth of glucono-delta-lactone will also be stable.

The main reasons are as follows,

•  Stable consumption in bean product

Bean product is the largest consumption field of glucono-delta-lactone all the time in China, which accounted for the largest parts of total consumption. So the development of glucono-delta-lactone mainly decided by the development of bean product. In recent years, the bean product was welcome in cities, but the development will trend to be stable on the whole.

•  Application research in other fields are not active

The consumption volume of glucono-delta-lactone consumed in other fields, such as meat product, beer, raising agent and beverage, only accounted for less than 10% of total consumption in China. The main reason is that there are cheap substances with the similar function as glucono-delta-lactone. At present the application research in other fields is not active resulting in no new fields consume glucono-delta-lactone. This shows the consumption and production of glucono-delta-lactone will be stable in future.

Expert Forum 4

The Development Proposal of Medicine Package Industry in China

In China , the total output value of medicine package industry only accounts for 10% of total package industry, which is much higher than the proportion of medicine industry in total industrial output value. With the development of new products, Chinese medicine industry has big developmental space, and its perspective is attractive. But there are some problems such as low technique and economic benefit. Some measures are expected to be taken for the development of medicine package industry.

- To recognize the status and role of medicine package industry

Medicines are special goods, and the package will affect the marketing of medicines, so for the long term package enterprises should increase their research and abilities on research and development, and have own products. In addition, they should bring forth new ideas on their products and increase levels of their products.

- To improve the technical proportion in medicine package industry

In China , the development of medicine package industry has some characteristics such as high efficiency, low benefit and high consumption, so most medicine packages have low quality level, 70% of which cannot reach international standard. In China, most medicine packages are very simple without anti-fake label in packing boxes, in addition, advanced technology for packing boxes production and printing are not used, which provides convenient for forging.

- To change thoughts about medicine package industry

At present, domestic medicine enterprises choose cheap coated duplex boards as materials for medicine packages which they think will decrease the cost. Generally, domestic medicine enterprises don't go to the expense of package, in fact, it is disadvantageous for selling of medicines. Package is a key section for products image, so the appearance of products should prove their inner quality.

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