President Xi Jinping has emphasized the importance of conducting more targeted patriotic health campaigns to guide the people in more proactively learning about health, mastering health skills, developing good health habits and practicing healthy lifestyles.

The instruction made by Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, comes as the nation marks the 70th anniversary of its patriotic health campaigns, a national movement initiated to mobilize the whole of society in 1952 in health promotion and disease prevention.

With China's COVID-19 response facing new situations and tasks, Xi highlighted the need to form a major defense against the pandemic in society with the fostering of millions of individual healthy environments.

The president lauded the key roles played by patriotic health campaigns over the past seven decades in improving the standard of the environment and health in urban and rural areas, effectively responding to major epidemics and bolstering the level of health governance in society.

He expressed hope that workers devoted to the campaigns can remain true to their original aspirations and mission, carry forward their fine traditions, offer more and better services and make new contributions to the Healthy China Initiative.

xuwei@chinadaily.com.cn