China imposed strict family planning rules in the 1970s in an attempt to limit the growth of its population.

Many pregnant women who have had their full quota of children have abortions to prevent unwanted births.
But young single women are most likely to have abortions in a country where there are 20 million births each year, the research found.

Experts said the high number of abortions was “cause for concern”, adding that many women who have abortions are single and aged between 20 and 29.

China began restricting the number of children each couple can have in 1978. Officials say this has prevented 400 million extra births.

A senior mental health official says that at least 100 million Chinese people, or 7.7% of the population, suffer from mental illness, the Telegraph reports.

“This is a modest number,” Huang Yueqin, the director of the National Center for Mental Health, told the paper, noting that actual figures may be much higher. By her own estimate, Huang says a third of her university classmates have had some form of mental illness.

The WHO notes that mental illness has overtaken heart disease and cancer as the largest burden on China’s health care system. There are few mental health professionals working in China today, and Huang estimates that only 5% of China’s mentally ill seek treatment.

To be fair, “100 million” sounds like a HUGE number, but in relation to the total population of China, this is actually a lower percentage than what is reported in the USA.

If the percentage holds, there would be well over 100,000 mentally ill people in Yueyang city alone!  A sobering realization.  Please be in prayer for the people of Yueyang.

Contagious hand-foot-mouth disease (HFMD) had led to 28 deaths in China as of Wednesday morning, according to Xinhua’s tally based on confirmed death reports from provincial-level health bureaus.

The central province of Hunan and southwestern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region reported their first and only HFMD death on Wednesday, after health minister Chen Zhu put the national death toll at 26 on Tuesday.

In Hunan, a two-year-old girl in Shahe Village, Changde City died at 5:20 a.m. on Tuesday, despite medical treatment. She had tested positive for enterovirus 71 (EV71), the most deadly strain of the virus family that has been linked to fatal HFMD cases in China.

Hand, foot and mouth disease is a common childhood illness that spreads through contact with saliva, feces, fluid secreted from blisters or mucus from the nose and throat. There is no vaccine or specific treatment, but most children typically recover quickly. It is unrelated to the foot and mouth disease that affects livestock.

Both Mao and WHO China representative Hans Troedsson said they expected more cases of hand, foot and mouth because of the tighter reporting requirements and because the disease will likely peak in June and July.

Last year, some 80,000 hand, foot and mouth cases were recorded in China, with 17 deaths, Mao said, adding that the figures were likely incomplete.

Troedsson said there are outbreaks caused by variations of EV-71 in China, Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore, where there have been a total of 10,490 cases in 2008.

“We need to put it in the right perspective,” Troedsson said. “This is something that regularly happens in countries in this region.”