Health

Network to take care of mentally ill

More than 3 million Chinese patients with serious mental disorders have been registered under a nationwide network of hospitals and health administrations so that they can get better care, according to a senior official at the National Health and Family Planning Commission.

The network, launched two years ago, is still being developed to cover more mentally ill people on the mainland, said Yan Jun, director of the mental health division at the commission's Disease Prevention and Control Department.

"Such a system can help mental health care providers keep better track of the patients and care for them. It helps public health, social stability and public safety," she said.

In 2009, more than 100 million Chinese had some form of mental disorder, and 16 million of them were severe cases, according to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The commission issued a circular requiring that people with any of the six types of serious mental illness can be registered in the national database. The six categories include schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, persistent delusional disorder and paranoid schizophrenia.

Crime

Bucket blast kills 2, injures 44

A massive explosion about 10 meters from a major county school in Lingchuan, the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, killed two people and seriously injured at least 44 on Sept 9.

The explosion occurred early in the morning, just as parents were dropping their children off at Balijie School, located on a busy street in Lingchuan and about 8 kilometers from Guilin.

The school employs 140 teachers and has 3,100 students from grades 1 to 9. Zhu Ge, a teacher at the school, said that most of the students were children of migrant workers.

Tang Xiaoling, the spokeswoman for the Lingchuan government, said a security camera almost directly above the school's front gate has footage of a driver on a motor tricycle carrying a metal bucket immediately before the explosion.

The blast instantly killed the driver, who has been listed as a suspect.

She added that the local government is still investigating if the explosion was a deliberate act of violence.

Legal

Railway graft case probe extended

Ding Shumiao, a businesswoman linked to the corruption case against China's former railway minister has been charged with bribery and illegal business activities, sources with the Beijing prosecution authority confirmed on Sept 7. The No 2 Beijing Intermediate People's Court has accepted the case, but a trial date has not been announced.

Ding intervened in bidding for dozens of railway projects through railway ministry staff members and was reported to be engaged in illegal business operations valued at 178.8 billion yuan ($29.21 billion), the statement said.

That amount of money was a quarter of the total railway investment nationwide in 2010 (707 billion yuan) and also close to the total financial revenue of Shanxi province in 2010 (181 billion yuan).

Starting from a small business of selling eggs, the 58-year-old Ding established a business empire after more than 30 years of struggle. In the 1980s, she began to invest in the coal business and then rail transport, according to media reports.

(China Daily European Weekly 09/13/2013 page2)