Premarital checks ensure healthy babies
By He Na and Li Fangchao (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-07-22 05:35

Nationally, the number of new couples attending a physical examination before marriage dropped dramatically last year. Only about one out of every 10 couples had a medical check-up.

In North China's Shanxi Province, which reported the largest number of congenital disease cases among newborn babies last year, the rate of premarital physical checks was just 2 per cent. In some areas of South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, almost no one had a physical examination before marriage, CCTV.com reported.

The number of newborn children with congenital diseases has doubled since the procedure became voluntary, according to Li Yuan from Beijing Xuanwumen Mother and Child Care Centre.

China has two laws and one regulation related to physical examination before marriage - the Marriage Law, the Law of Mother and Infant Health Care and the Regulation for Marriage Registration. These rulings conflict with each other, Beijing News reported.

The Marriage Law does not include premarital physical examination as a precondition of marriage registration. Hence, the Regulation for Marriage Registration, which was revised and took effect in 2003 by the State Council, clearly abandoned the system of compulsory premarital examination.

But in the Law of Mother and Infant Health Care, which came into being in 1995, premarital examinations are necessary for marriage registration.

Such confusion has caused problems across the country, the Beijing News stated.

Hao Yi, a university graduate who got married on New Year's Day this year, said she and her husband did not have a physical examination.

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