(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-01-10 22:50

BEIJING -- Chinese Ministry of Health announced here on Thursday its top ten medical news stories in 2007 including the scandal involving the National Committee on Oral Health (NCOH).

The NCOH was disbanded last April over an illegal endorsement scandal. Founded in 1988, the committee was not entitled to endorse dental care products but nevertheless accepted 2.1 million yuan in illegal endorsements after China's endorsement regulation was released in 2003.

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The list also included the story of Li Liyun, a 22-year-old who was in her ninth month of pregnancy when she died of pneumonia at Jingxi Hospital in western Beijing on November 21 after her husband refused to let doctors perform Caesarean surgery.

The couple, from central China's Hunan Province, were migrant workers in the western suburbs of Beijing. The husband, Xiao Zhijun, works at a restaurant for a monthly salary of only 700 yuan (about 93 US dollars).

Xiao said that he had consulted government departments about receiving a free operation for his wife but had not found any policy to assist expectant mothers. Li's death in Beijing sparked public calls for more government aid to the poor.

Also on the list is the appointment of Chen Zhu, former vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), as the minister of health by China's top legislature.

Chen, 54, is the second non-Party figure to be given a ministerial position since the late 1970s.

Other stories were China's plans to provide universal basic services at reasonable prices, a goal set by the 17th National Congress of Communist Party of China, and the visits of Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao to see AIDS patients.