China was certified malaria-free by the World Health Organization (WHO) earlier this week, marking another outstanding achievement in disease prevention and control.

The country has fought for disease prevention over half a century and been continuing the fight for the well-being of its people.

From the 1950s, health authorities in China worked to locate and stop the spread of malaria by providing preventive antimalarial medicines for people at risk as well as treatment for the sick. The country also made a major effort to reduce mosquito breeding grounds and stepped up the use of insecticide spraying in homes in some areas.

In 1967, the Chinese government launched the "523 Project" – a nationwide research program to find new treatments for malaria. This effort, involving more than 500 scientists from 60 institutions, led to the discovery in the 1970s of artemisinin – the core compound of artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs), the most effective antimalarial drugs available today.

In 1980s, China was also one of the first nations that widely used insecticide-treated bed nets to prevent malaria, even before the WHO recommended it to the world. By 1988, over 2.4 million bed nets were distributed nationwide, substantially reducing incidents of the disease. By 1990, deaths caused by malaria fell by 95 percent.

"China provides a basic public health service package for its residents free of charge. As part of this package, all people in China have access to affordable services for the diagnosis and treatment of malaria, regardless of legal or financial status," the WHO statement said.

Malaria is not the only disease China has declared extinct on its land. Back in the 1950s, China embarked on a prolonged movement against infectious diseases.

Smallpox, one of the acute infectious diseases with highest death cases of 10,000 per year, was raging the country before 1952. Since 1950, the government has launched a vaccination program for every citizen, successfully helping 500 million people get inoculated with 1.8 billion doses within a decade. The cases dropped to about 300 from 100,000 in about ten years. In July of 1979, WHO announced China has wiped out smallpox in 1960s, 17 years ahead of the world became smallpox-free.

Polio could kill 5-10 percent of all patients before the vaccine came out. China encouraged its scientists in the 1950s to develop a vaccine to fight the disease, later known as the oral vaccine "sugar ball". The vaccine has been applied widely around the nation and included in the national vaccine plan. China was declared polio-free in 2000 after the last case occurred in 1994.

In addition, China has also conducted research and developed methods to reduce cases of diseases including filariasis, lepriosis and endemic diseases such as iodine deficiency disorders, Kachin-Beck disease and Keshan disease.

The nation also invested seven billion yuan ($1 billion) in 2019 to improve the condition of the toilets in rural households to step up the hygiene situation, preventing diseases caused by the lack of sanitary facilities. Toilet renovation and the increase of the number of public toilets has been a long-term project in China for decades.

In the face of COVID-19, China also carried out a slew of measures to quickly control the damage and provided immediate medical help for all the people and free vaccines to clear the virus. As of July 3, China also has provided vaccine aid for about 100 countries and exported vaccines to over 50 countries. As the vaccine is still a rare asset worldwide, China has provided 480 million vaccine doses to the world, the most among all nations.