China's national vaccine supervision system has met or passed all the standard requirements of the World Health Organization (WHO), according to a WHO announcement on July 4.

The WHO stipulates only countries with an approved national vaccine regulatory system can receive WHO accreditation and have their vaccines added to the WHO international vaccine purchase list.

Countries that make it through an initial assessment undergo a second inspection after three years. China passed the initial WHO evaluation in March 2011, and passed the second in October 2013.

China has a mature vaccine regulatory system with supervision reinforced continuously, the WHO announcement said.

Zhang Yong, chief of the China Food and Drug Administration, said that China will fulfill its duty as a WHO member in disease prevention and control.

Anti-Terror Letter

A total of 354 representatives for entrepreneurs and staff belonging to minority ethnic groups in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region have published an open letter denouncing terrorism.

"The terrorists' criminal acts have wronged us and made us unable to operate at ease," said the letter, titled Lofty Obligations and Responsibilities Along the Glorious Silk Road—a Letter to Fellow Uygurs.

The letter, which was posted on July 7, came after a series of deadly terrorist attacks in Xinjiang's capital city Urumqi, as well as in Kunming in southwest China's Yunnan Province and Beijing in 2013 and earlier this year.

"How can we let terrorists push Uygur identity, with its glorious culture, into darkness?" said the letter, which was released at a press conference in Urumqi.

Genome Sequencing

The first batch of qualified genome-sequencing tools for prenatal checks was approved by the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) on July 7.

In a bid to regulate the industry, the agency in February called a halt to all genome sequencing in clinical practice and said that related appliances, reagents and medical-use software must be registered with the CFDA.

It also said that clinical practices must be approved by the National Health and Family Planning Commission.

Many medical professionals have welcomed the CFDA's recent decision.

"Genome sequencing in prenatal checks can identify 99 percent of all Down's syndrome cases," said Duan Tao, President of Shanghai First Maternity and Infant Hospital. "It also reduces the need for invasive practices such as amniocentesis."

Li Ruzhi with the Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital of Fudan University, however, said that while genome sequencing is an effective diagnostic tool for diseases caused by chromosome variation it is not effective in identifying diseases related to gene mutation.

Only people with positive results in primary screening or those with a risk of miscarriage as a result of undergoing amniocentesis should be put forward for genome sequencing, according to Li.