Beijing Olympics 2008

Water quality in Qingdao will meet the standard for the Olympic sailing event, a report issued by China’s State Oceanic Administration (SOA) said on Tuesday.
At the Olympic sailing venue in eastern Shandong Province, the water quality was excellent for about 30 percent of the days monitored in August and fairly good for the rest, the report said.
The bacteria rate in the water was also below the national and international level, it added.
The 2008 Olympic Games will open on Aug. 8 and run to Aug. 24.
Six “red tides“, or algal blooms, were monitored in the coastal areas of Qingdao from 2004 to 2007. Only one, however, happened in August and it was non-toxic, the report said.
The SOA and Qingdao government have conducted environmental monitoring at the sailing venue since 2004, said Jiang Chongbo, an SOA official.
Qingdao’s light wind conditions had raised concern among athletes, but organizers said at a press conference last week that the coastal city was absolutely capable of providing adequate racing conditions.
Qingdao Vice Mayor Zang Aimin said that judging from the last two years’ test events and the meteorologic data for the past 30 years, the city’s wind conditions could meet the standards to hold Olympic sailing competitions.
“Though the city’s wind conditions are far from perfect, we are confident that the Olympic sailing events can proceed without a hitch,” she said.

from: xinhuanet.com 

China’s Minister of Health Chen Zhu said on Monday the government will ensure public health safety during the Beijing Olympic Games by strengthening disease monitoring, emergency response and medical treatment.
“The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games provides a great opportunity for the country’s public health development. Beijing will join hands with co-host cities and its neighboring provinces to strengthen disease-related information monitoring and make risk evaluations on the possible public health accidents.”
He said rehearsals would be held and exercises in public health accidents would be improved. This was to prevent, reduce and eliminate risks in the public health sphere during the August Games to the maximum.
Liu Zejun, director of Beijing Municipal Disease Prevention and Control Center, said special attention would be paid to the following aspects when making public health risk evaluations: epidemic disease spread, group incidence of a certain disease, food-inflicted disease, vector organism and its control, hotel disinfection, drinking water safety, environment safety and heat stroke.
“Great efforts will be made in preventing rabies, bird flu, SARS and group poisonings,” Chen stressed.
Since the 2003 SARS outbreak, China has gradually improved its national disease prevention and control system. From 2002 to now, about 10.5 billion yuan (76.3 U.S. million dollars) had been spent on infrastructure construction of disease prevention and control centers nationwide.

from: xinhuanet.com