As China prepares a new, Five-Year Plan that is widely expected to emphasise greater equity, the World Bank is calling for a shift in government spending from investment in physical infrastructure to spending on “social infrastructure," notably health and education.

With ten years remaining to meet the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goals, China seems unlikely to achieve water and sanitation targets. Obstacles include scarce, unevenly distributed and increasingly polluted water resources, a legacy of supply side policies, and a confused division of institutional responsibilities. The government is spending more on the water sector, and is also exploring new management mechanisms; but, Matt Perrement reports, planners still seem to find gargantuan development projects more attractive than efficiency gains in the use of existing resources.

Snow Lotus (雪莲花), an independent volunteer group based in Urumqi, this week helped launch a Sunrise Club (朝阳社) devoted to AIDS awareness and prevention at Xinjiang Agriculture University, and is preparing a two-month programme of outreach activities on campuses with support from the Urumqi Centre for Disease Control.

The Clinton Foundation and China’s Ministry of Health have launched a Service Fellowship to place clinical experts in rural areas affected by HIV/AIDS to improve the delivery of care programmes.

Damien Foundation support for national tuberculosis and leprosy control programmes will from January 2006 include technical assistance to support TB control in Guizhou Province, according to a recently signed five-year agreement with the Ministry of Health.

The American Red Cross is the latest International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies member to arrive in China, establishing an office in Beijing to oversee work in water and sanitation and public health education.

A report commissioned by the World Health Organisation has raised concerns over the growing prevalence of non-communicable diseases in the Western Pacific Region and warns that failure to respond to the situation could bring grave consequences.

A hard-hitting State Development Research Centre report on China’s ailing public health system appears set to “elevate debate over health care to a new level” according to a spokesperson from the Word Health Organisation office in Beijing.

A series of tobacco control activities appear to have confirmed China’s commitment to an international Convention on Tobacco Control, leading a WHO official to comment that China is likely to ratify the Convention “sooner rather than later.”

A ‘Directory of HIV/AIDS NGOs in China’ profiling 101 civil society organisations and projects working in the field of AIDS prevention, treatment, advocacy and care was published at the end of June by the ZhiAiXing Health Information and Consultancy Centre (formerly the AiZhiXing Health Education Institute), led by renowned AIDS activist, Wan Yanhai.