By Hepeng Jia

BEIJING — China has not always been a world leader when it comes to infectious disease surveillance. Severe acute respiratory syndrome caught the country by surprise in 2003, and, two years later, government officials went into denial after reports surfaced that H5N1 avian influenza had infected people and birds. But since those debacles, China has ramped up its screening efforts, building several infectious-disease institutes and more than 400 labs devoted to flu surveillance and testing, plus adding sentinel equipment to some 550 hospitals. So when H1N1 ‘swine flu’ struck four years later, the world’s most populous country was much better prepared.

“China has set up the world’s largest influenza surveillance network,” Yuelong Shu, director of the National Influenza Center, part of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told Nature Medicine. And now, China can also boast being the first country in the developing world to host a World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center for Reference and Research on Influenza.

Joining other collaborating centers in Australia, Japan, the UK and the US, the Beijing-based National Influenza Center will serve as a regional hub for monitoring and responding to flu outbreaks. The Chinese center will also host research into new antiviral medicines and help provide pandemic preparedness training for medical personnel from across East Asia.

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Image: H1N1, CDC’s Doug Jordan