BEIJING — Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan called for better prevention and cure of major diseases, with emphasis on the former, at a meeting of the State Council held on May 29.

Sun, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, stressed taking prevention and cure of major diseases as an important task in building a healthy China.

Prevention should play a more significant role when dealing with major infectious diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, and flu, said Sun, who asked for appropriate monitoring of diseases, innovation in vaccines and other biomedicine fields, more interventions among certain districts and groups of people, and measures to reduce burden on patients.

Sun, who also visited the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention on May 29, asked the center to make more progress in technical research, introduce health knowledge to the public, better train and guide local organs, and train professional personnel for disease prevention and control.