It was learned from the Zhejiang Provincial Population and Family Planning Commission that 560 thousand people had the free premarital and pre-pregnancy check-up for eugenic purpose ever since our province adopted for the first time in China the free check-up last year. The special funding from various levels of government for this purpose has reached 58 million RMB. However, the results indicate that the health condition of those would-be-married and would-be-pregnant couples is far from optimistic. More than 50000 people were found to have various kinds of diseases that might affect the reproductive health such as notifiable infectious diseases, reproductive system diseases, hereditary diseases, cytomegalovirus, and toxoplasma gondii infection.   

Experts appeal that departments concerned in all areas should continue strengthening the premarital and pre-pregnancy check-up work, and raise people¡¯s awareness and initiative to take voluntary premarital and pre-pregnancy medical check-up for eugenic purpose. The preventive work of birth defect should be done before their pregnancy. Intervenient measures should be adopted well in advance for those high-risk groups such as those who might have abnormal births, and those who are older than 35 years old and give birth for the first time so as to minimize the birth defects and improve the quality of newborns in our province.