Program increases health of children

The rate of anemia in young participants fell by 51 percent after the program was initiated, and the rate of stunted growth dropped by 68 percent, she said during a news conference in April.

"When distributing the packets, parents of poor families also have a chance to get in touch with healthcare workers who can share knowledge about child raising," she added.

The program's fruitful outcomes would not have been possible without decades of research efforts by Chinese researchers, led by Chen Junshi, a prominent nutrition scientist and a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, as well as Chen Chunming, founding president of the China Academy of Preventive Medicine, now known as the China CDC.

Since 2001, Chinese researchers have launched several pilot projects in Gansu, Qinghai and other inland provinces to develop a formula for Ying Yang Bao with adequate efficacy. Pilot results have been promising, with a significant decrease in the incidence of fever and diarrhea for children who were fed the supplement daily for at least six months, according to the commission.

The program also played a significant role in preventing an increase in child malnutrition in earthquake-stricken areas.

After a devastating earthquake hit Wenchuan in Sichuan province on May 12, 2008, health authorities, with the support of the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, raced to send packets of the supplementary food to severely affected areas.

The biggest challenge during the emergency aid program was to ensure the smooth and consistent transport of food packets to remote, mountainous areas, experts have said. Eighteen months later, the rate of anemia in these regions had dropped from 79 to 31 percent.

"The project in quake-hit areas also helped improve the distribution, information collection, promotion and surveillance of the Ying Yang Bao program," experts said.

The success of the program offers a peek into the remarkable progress China has achieved in terms of boosting women's and children's health in the past decades.

Song Li, head of the commission's department of Maternal and Child Health, said that in addition to improving the nutritional status of children, the country has expanded access to prenatal examinations, and cervical and breast cancer screening in impoverished countries, in an effort to narrow the gap between urban and rural regions.

"The health of women and children is a significant marker of the development of society," she said. "In 2020, the national maternal mortality rate was 16.9 per 100,000, down by 15.9 percent from 2015. The infant mortality rate stood at 5.4 per 1,000 in 2020, a decrease of 33.3 percent compared with 2015."

She added that in terms of the key barometers of women's and children's health, China is in the leading group among middle- and high-income countries.