China's Ministry of Health has issued a circular urging regional bureaus to step up guard against plague, SARS, and human cases of bird flu.

It also orders improving the mechanism to deal with outbreaks of unidentified diseases.

It says plague, SARS and human cases of bird flu constitute top priorities of efforts to prevent and handle major public health emergencies.

It calls for preventing plague along the Qinghai-Tibet railway and around major construction projects.

It urges summarizing experience in SARS prevention and control, improving preparedness plans and technology solutions so that relevant work will be carried out in a scientific way.

It orders improving preparedness plans and technology solutions for human cases of bird flu so that relevant work will be carried out in a scientific way.

It says ample preparations should be made to deal with a large outbreak of flu. Relevant government departments should share information on bird flu epidemics timely.

Source: Xinhua